“Made in Italy Pavilion” The Italian Trade and Investment Agency and Alibaba Group together for the acceleration of Italian SMEs - Orcom C&A

Dear Members and Friends of CICC,

The China Italy Chamber of Commerce (CICC) is glad to share with you this news from its member Orcom C&A.

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and the Italian Trade and Investment Agency (ICE) have signed an agreement for the promotion of Made in Italy products regarding the B2B market. The ceremony for the signature of the Agreement has been held on November 23, in the presence of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Luigi Di Maio.

The “Made in Italy Pavilion” hosted in Alibaba online platform will allow 300 Italian companies participating in the initiative to be present in 190 countries, having the possibility to intercept 26 million active professional buyers, allowing business dialogue between buyers and sellers in 19 different languages.

Active since 1999, Alibaba.com is an e-commerce platform that allows international buyers to search for producers of goods worldwide, including a wide range of product categories. With its 150 million registered users that include 26 million active professional buyers, 40 product sectors and 5900 product categories, Alibaba.com is the world's largest B2B trading platform worldwide.

Over the past three years, Alibaba.com has widely expanded its business outside China, with a consistent growth rate of 380% in competitive markets such as the USA, Canada, Germany, UK, Mexico, Russia, India.

The partnership with Alibaba group is part of a framework of strategic agreements that ICE has been able to finalize in Mainland China since 2019. This partnership, together with the projects already launched with JD.com, with Tencent’s WeChat and Suning platforms, will enable Italian SMEs to further strengthen their presence in the Chinese e-commerce business environment.

The new B2B partnership adds up to the projects already started on B2C platforms and includes strategic sectors that had so far been excluded from the e-commerce markets, such as: health and medical, minerals and metallurgy, machinery, industrial parts & tools. Companies operating in these sectors will be able to establish a new digital promotion strategy benefiting from the strategic promotion made by ICE.

The wished payoff is to ensure to Italian companies a greater degree of internationalization and greater global promotion of Made in Italy.

The initiative will involve up to 300 Italian companies, of which 100 operating in the technology and capital goods sector, 100 operating in the agri-food and wine sector, and 100 operating in the consumer goods sector.

The initiative is divided into three specific lines of action:

The Creation of the Pavilion dedicated to Made in Italy, aimed at promoting the widest possible range of product categories. The pavilion will be included in the Global Marketplace of Alibaba.com and a banner directed to the Made in Italy Pavilion will be published on the platform’s homepage to drive potentially interested buyers to the participating companies.

Preferential access conditions to the platform and personalized assistance for the creation and launch of company pages; in particular, each company will have access to Global Gold Supplier Membership at “zero costs” for the first 24 months and the chance to open a virtual store having access to buyers from all over the world.

In conclusion, the creation of a digital advertising campaign, which will advertise the presence of Italian products to the potentially interested stakeholders and will drive traffic to the online stores based on the user profiling algorithms made available by the platform.

For more information on the eligibility criteria and the application procedure, please refer to the dedicated: https://www.ice.it/it/ALIBABA/B2B

Orcom C&A team

Orcom C&A team, led by Senior Managers Sarah Orlando and Johannes Lazzaro, has successfully assisted ICE during the identification of the specifics of the cooperation with Alibaba Group, advising on technical and contractual aspects and supporting in the conclusion of negotiation with the partner, to ensure a smooth launch and running of the Italian companies’ operations on global markets.

Kind regards,

CICC Team