Japan-based casual clothing retailer First Retailing(its brandname, Uniqlo) started its online sales in Mainland China[C], in tie-up with Taobao[C]. Taobao is China’s largest online shopping mall by the e-commerce giant Alibaba, and it engages more than 100 million frantic shoppers in the country. This is the first independent entry by a Japanese large retailer to China’s e-commerce market. Uniqlo’s CEO Tadashi Yanai unveiled the company is aiming to grow its online sales up to 10% of Uniqlo’s entire retail business in Mainland China.
Shanghai Transcosmos, a local subsidiary of Japan’s large BPO (business process outsourcing) provider, handles all the back-end processes for Uniqlo’s new e-commerce site. Transcoscmos has call center facilities in Beijing and Shanghai, and the two sites have 560 seats for call center representatives.
Masaru IKEDA