Obama, Ma Talk Alibaba’s X-Border Expansion

Two powerful men, one stage. Lots of jokes.

That’s the scene that took place yesterday (Nov. 18) when U.S. President Barack Obama sat down with Alibaba founder Jack Ma to talk about government and business during a panel discussion at an Asia-Pacific summit.

Because Alibaba has been looking to expand its presence far beyond China — and has been eyeing the U.S. market for quite some time — it made sense that Obama had things to chat about with Ma. But it was noted in multiple media reports of the summit that having the president sit down with a Chinese business leader was somewhat unprecedented.

Obama and Ma specifically talked about the government’s role in working with businesses to encourage entrepreneurs to grow their businesses.

“Government is simple — just reduce the tax, or no tax, for these guys,” Ma said.

The lighthearted conversation included Ma discussing Alibaba’s efforts to expand its international presence, which means getting its footprint outside of mainland China. With eCommerce becoming more of a cross-border commerce trend, Alibaba believes it has the potential to tap into a massive market outside its homeland.

Brazil and Russia, in fact, have been named by Alibaba as two markets with potential.

Alibaba has gotten plenty of attention lately on the cross-border commerce front since the eCommerce giant made quite the splash with its record-setting 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (AKA Singles’ Day). The 24-hour shopping holiday brought in $14.3 billion in total GMV, which was a 60 percent increase from 2014’s figure of $9.3 billion.

And while it may be assumed Alibaba’s Singles’ Day is only popular in China, the stats show that buyers and sellers came from 232 countries and regions from around the world. Top countries selling to China included: the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Germany and Australia. More than 16,000 international brands had completed transactions and 33 percent of total buyers purchased from international brands or merchants.

This year, Alibaba was hyper-focused on promoting the cross-border commerce aspect of the shopping holiday, which includes products from more than 40,000 merchants, 30,000 brands and 25 countries.

Known as the largest shopping day in the world, Singles’ Day blows Black Friday and Cyber Monday out of the water. To put Alibaba’s figures into context, the total amount that retailers took in during 2014’s Black Friday was $50.9 billion. And that was over a four-day holiday weekend. The number of shoppers during the holiday weekend was estimated to be 133.7 million.

In six years, the widely recognized Chinese retail holiday — which was originally aimed at encouraging singles to shop for something special for themselves — has transformed into an event that attracts shoppers, brands and merchants from around the world.