Sunday, September 24, 2006

Taobao is everywhere_My Shanghai Experience_part one

I already came back to Hong Kong. Time flied fast while 22 days just went away in a second.

It's the longest time for me to stay in the mainland China for the past year. I have to admit, things go faster than I thought. China is an amazing country, I would say, in many areas.

Near my place in Shanghai, there is a street where people sell various stuffs along it during the night. For example, pirate DVDs, make-up, and cups. I shopped around for some cheap, really cheap accessories on the street before the day I left. And the experience is really interesting.

"How about the quality of this necklace?" I asked a boy who must be under the age of 20.

"Good, good. It is just transported from Thailand". The boy answered.

"Really? are you sure it is really good?" I asked again, just for fun.

"Yeah, definitely'. He said firmly, then handed out a name card to me with the name for his accessory store, something like "luxury jewlery", and a website address.

"We are a famous store on Taobao.com". The boy answered. "So we will not cheat".

Oh, my god, this is amazing. someone selling stuffs out of the street told me to go to a website to check his stuffs. I wouldn't imagine it before, but now it seems true. He must be not the only person who do it, and I guess there are thousands of thousands of.

That's the amazing thing about Taobao.com, as well as other websites in China. As China is so big, Internet suddenly becomes something businessmen shorten the distance from the customers. I am not a fun of Jack Ma, the founder of Taobao.com, but I would like to say he knows a lot on China's common consumers. I once had a flatmate in Hong Kong who sells her clothes online, and who really likes Taobao.

On the other side, Eachnet.com, the Shanghai-originated website founded by two Harvard Business School graduate, has went out of play these days, at least, told by my former flatmate.

Say, that's the Internet, where Jack Ma, a former English teacher, could beat two HBS graduates. And there will be more amazing things.

3 comments:

China Herald said...

Eachnet, ah, that sounds like the good old days when the internet started to emerge. In what way are they "out of play", Amy? They have been bought long time ago by Ebay who sidelined the people who made it big. Only one of a lot of stupid things that helped Taobao quite a lot.

Amy Gu said...

I think Ebay is out of its style now. Many people moved their shops to Taobao, and nobody is talking on Eachnet right now. I really miss its two HBS founders, and they are so cool.

Amy Gu said...

I could always sense things in advance. Say, Ebay is talking with Tom.com to see Eachnet right now, according to sources.See, Eachnet is out of style now, I am totall right.