Amazon is selling products in a new store on rival marketplace Tmall .
The web store follows a Kindle store previously opened on Tmall by the giant retailer, which trades in the UK as Amazon.co.uk. The company already has a Kindle store and is now selling products from snacks to fashion and toys on the Chinese marketplace. UK retailers from M&S to Burberry also sell through Tmall, which is said to host around half of China’s online transactions.
The move comes three years after Euromonitor predicted 2015 would be the year Tmall overtook Amazon as the world’s largest online retailer.
A spokeswoman for Tmall parent company Alibaba told the BBC: “We welcome Amazon to the Alibaba ecosystem and their presence will further broaden the selection of products and elevate the shopping experience for Chinese consumers on Tmall.”
Closer to home, the GMB union has raised concerns about redundancies at Amazon. It has called on the retailer to follow UK legal requirements when cutting staff numbers in the UK. Amazon told WalesOnline, “We have added well over 2,000 new permanent employees in the UK over the past two years, and we are still hiring.
“Customers are best served by an engaged, positive workforce and that is our focus. We created the offer to provide employees who are ready for a new career with an opportunity to smooth their transition, whilst rewarding their service to customers.
“The offer is not a redundancy programme. We are happy to say very few of our employees chose to voluntarily resign under the programme, choosing instead to stay and continue to do great work for customers.”
