Alibaba has agreed to sell four of its American e-commerce assets to U.S.-based social shopping platform OpenSky.
Alibaba will give OpenSky 11main.com, Auctiva, Vendio and SingleFeed in exchange for about a 37% stake in OpenSky.
No financial details or exact timing on the deal are yet available, according to reports in foreign media.
11main.com is an online shopping platform launched by Alibaba at the beginning of 2014; while Auctiva, Vendio, and SingleFeed were acquired by the Chinese e-commerce group in 2010 and 2011 to provide logistics and performance services to 11main.com.
Compared with Alibaba's Chinese online shopping websites, 11main.com is a very small business and it is reportedly difficult for this American subsidiary to gain attention or support from Alibaba's Chinese headquarters in Hangzhou. This lack of attention may suggest Alibaba does not have the international management expertise or expansion ability to get past the Great Wall and grow around the world.
Founded in 2009, OpenSky originally provided online trade platform services to well-known bloggers and it gradually transformed into a social shopping platform. At present, the company claims to have 50,000 vendors, two million kinds of products, and five million members.
