An employee puts a box for shipment on the conveyor belt at Best Inc.'s warehouse in Shanghai, China, on Monday, Nov. 6, 2017. Best, the Chinese logistics provider backed by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., is scouting for acquisitions of technology companies both in China and the U.S. that will help it boost efficiency and break even as early as next year. Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
Jack Ma beat Jeff Bezos into grocery stores. Now China’s richest man is again showing his rival the way by targeting 6 million mom-and-pop shops, the biggest test yet of a vision to reinvent physical retail.
Ma’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is prepping for Singles’ Day – an annual Nov 11 online shopping fiesta dwarfing Black Friday and Cyber Monday that Citigroup Inc estimates could generate a record 158bil yuan (RM99.96bil) of sales. This year comes with a twist: the e-commerce titan has enlisted 10% of China’s convenience stores, about 600,000 outlets, to hawk goods and get billions of parcels shipped to customers nationwide.
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