Taobao Split: Separating Wheat From the Chaff 淘宝一分为三如何取其精华

By newsdoug on June 16, 2011

Finally, there’s a bit of interesting news coming from Alibaba Group that doesn’t involve its ongoing dispute with investors Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Softbank over its online payments service. In Alibaba’s latest strategic move, which appears unrelated to the ongoing feud over Alipay, the company is preparing to split Taobao, its main consumer-oriented e-commerce asset, into three units: one focused on B2C, one on C2C and a third focused on e-commerce searches. (English article) This move smells distinctly of preparation for an IPO for the B2C unit, Taobao Mall, and is likely the result of years of pressure from Softbank — an original investor in Taobao as well as the bigger Alibaba Group — for Taobao split augers B2C IPO Alibaba to better monetize Taobao so it can get back some of its investment. Taobao started out largely as a C2C site, in direct competition with eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY). But that business has failed to ever generate much money due to Alibaba’s repeated refusal to charge any listing or transaction fees for the site. Taobao Mall grew up later, and is clearly a more attractive business as sellers are mostly commercial retailers who don’t mind paying a fee to sell their products online, which carries much lower overhead than traditional real-world stores. Following this split-up, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Taobao Mall publish some financials relatively soon to start drumming up support for an IPO in as little as the next 12 months. After all, Softbank has waited nearly a decade to get some return out of its original investments in both Alibaba and Taobao and now it looks like the wait could finally be almost over.

Bottom line: Alibaba’s split-up of its Taobao consumer e-commerce company foreshadows an IPO for the B2C unit, Taobao Mall, within the next 12 months.

除了与雅虎和软银的在线支付服务纠纷外，阿里巴巴集团终於有了些其它有意思的新闻。阿里巴巴的最新战略举措似乎与支付宝重组争端无关，该集团将把淘宝网分拆为三家不同商业模式的公司：C2C网上购物平台淘宝网、B2C购物网站淘宝商城和网上购物搜索引擎一淘。此举明显是为淘宝商城上市做准备，而这有可能是软银多年施压的结果。软银一直敦促阿里巴巴更好地对淘宝进行货币化操作，以收回其部分投资。淘宝起初主要是以C2C网上购物平台模式运营，直接与eBay构成竞争。但由於阿里巴巴一再拒绝对淘宝网收取开店和交易费用，该业务盈利一直较少。淘宝商城後来崛起，明显成为一项更诱人的业务，因为店家多为商业零售商，网上卖货比传统实体店开销低得多，所以他们并不介意支付一些费用。淘宝一分为三後，若淘宝商城不久就发布一些财报，开始为一年内上市造势，我不会感到惊讶。毕竟，为收回对阿里巴巴和淘宝的最初投资，软银已经等待了近10年，现在看来似乎不用再等多久了。

一句话：阿里巴巴将淘宝一分为三，为B2C淘宝商城未来一年内上市埋下伏笔。

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