Amazon Pinduoduo popup faces crowded China ecommerce market

Amazon has launched a month-long popup store on Chinese ecommerce platform Pinduoduo. 

In the west Amazon sits atop the ecommerce throne, but the international outlook is less rosy. In April the firm shut down part of its operations in the country to focus on selling products from outside China to customers within.

Western companies operating in China have had to respond to the fundamentally different way of doing business in the country. Uber sold its operations in China to local competitor DiDi Chuxing, taking a 15% stake for its troubles. DiDi has since gone from strength to strength, gearing up for the launch of a robotaxi service and perhaps validating Uber’s decision, considering its own travails regarding profitability.

Pinduoduo is a rising star in the Chinese tech industry, recently becoming the second largest ecommerce and fifth largest tech company in the country despite being founded only four years ago. That’s partly thanks to its non-standard business model involving ‘team purchasing’ – where communities can band together for bulk purchases that drive down prices.

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It’s a key point of difference from rivals such as Alibaba Group and its various business to business, business to customer, and customer to customer platforms. There’s also JD.com and its focus on high-tech solutions such as drone delivery.

As reported in Reuters, a Pinduoduo spokesperson said that the partnership with Amazon was aimed at offering “equal opportunities for our users to access global products. We are committed to working with our partners as part of our global outreach to offer best value-for-money products worldwide to our users.”

“The Amazon Global Store pop-up store on Pinduoduo provides customers with a curated selection of about 1,000 overseas products with competitive prices, authenticity guarantee and convenient shipping,” said Amazon in a statement. “We look forward to enabling customers to enjoy cross-border shopping through this store.”