Alibaba Fuses Digital Stores with Livestreaming

Use of the online video platform continued to surge in recent months as brands and merchants impacted by Covid-19, including mall operator Intime and furniture retailer Easyhome, increasingly turned to livestreaming to resume operations.

A few weeks later, a designer brand that was moving its headquarters reached out to the couple to help sell excess inventory. The brand had about 700 pairs of shoes it wanted to unload. Within three hours, during a livestream on Taobao, Yuan and Zhang sold all the merchandise.

As offline modes of operations became disrupted by the Covid-19 disease, Taobao Live offered businesses a lifeline to reach vast audiences, including the more than 800 million monthly active users that visit Alibaba’s e-commerce sites. In February, Taobao Live removed barriers and waived service fees for brick-and-mortar merchants to join its platf... See more