Xiamen firm seeks transformation via Alipay

Xiamen-based Erke seeks transformation by starting membership on Alipay. [Photo/ xmnn.cn]

Xiamen-based Erke, a traditional sportswear enterprise, has been transformed after taking out an Alipay membership.

Alipay is a third-party mobile and online payment platform established by Alibaba Group, a Chinese multinational e-commerce, retail, Internet, AI and technology conglomerate.

"There's mainly two improvements after starting the membership business in Alipay in June 2017," director of Erke's marketing department said.

Sixty percent of Erke's inactive members have become active and its online and offline sales volumes have seen rapid growth.

In addition, the information technology and marketing functions brought by Alipay make members' consuming behaviour more analysable for Erke so that it can market its products to more needed members.

Lu Xiaohu, vice-president of Erke, said that their different stores have different decorations and products. For example, those near a school include shoes and clothes popular among students and decoration full of vigor and vitality.

Knowing targeted customers' consumption habits and then marketing products appropriately helps Erke increase the proportion of visitors who order by 15 to 20 percent, according to Lu.

Erke also updated their supply chain under the background of new retailing – the integration of online, offline, logistics and data across a single value chain – a term coined by Alibaba Founder and Chairman Jack Ma.

The enterprise has embarked on the establishment of smart logistics and updated its warehouse management system to distribute products nationwide and even its offline stores are capable of distributing products to other offline stores, which previously was exclusive to online stores.

"It took only three minutes for the fastest order during last year's Double 11 Day, China's largest online shopping day, from placing an order to receiving the product," the vice-president said.

He explained that since the order's delivery place was near one of Erke's factories, the updated warehouse management system decided to settle the order first after identifying it and that's why Erke was able to finalize the order in just three minutes.