One month after taking office, Jiang Fan, the new president of Tmall, has set a goal of doubling gross merchandise value (GMV) on Alibaba’s consumer-to-business e-commerce portal over the next three years.
Although Alibaba doesn’t currently disclose total GMV figures, the company revealed in its most recent earnings call that Tmall’s GMV was up 29% year-on-year for the quarter ending in December, and that total sales during last year’s November 11 shopping event grew 27% year-on-year to RMB 213.5 billion (USD 31.67 billion).
The growth rates for both figures were slower than the year before: For the same quarter in 2017, Tmall’s year-on-year GMV growth was 43%, while November 11 shopping grew 39%.
Meanwhile, new customers on Tmall increased by over 100 million in the past year, Fan said, and he sees more room for growth among younger users, as well as in the beauty product category.
In light of this, despite the slowdown in GMV growth, achieving a 100% increase in sales volume over the next 12 quarters will be challenging but seems achievable.
Fan, who is also president of Alibaba’s consumer-to-consumer e-commerce platform Taobao, had his purview expanded to Tmall after an organizational reshuffle in March and has pledged greater integration between the two platforms as both target similar groups of consumers.