Daymond John, Entrepreneur and Co-star of ABC’s Hit Show “Shark Tank”. Photo Credit: Shutterstock

This week, Alibaba Group’s cloud computing arm Alibaba Cloud pledged $1 billion over the next three years to support its partners’ innovation and their expansion.

In other news, Alibaba announced a $750,000 grants program to back small-and-medium-sized businesses in the U.S., with a focus on support for logistics and innovative products. One lucky recipient will have a one-on-one mentorship session with Daymond John.

Alibaba Cloud Commits $1 Billion to Strengthen Global Ecosystem

Alibaba Cloud said on Thursday that it would invest $1 billion to support its partners’ technology innovation and their market expansion over the next three fiscal years.

The investment will consist of financial and non-financial incentives such as funding, rebates, and marketing support for its partners within its ecosystem, including resellers, technology partners, and consulting partners. Alibaba Cloud currently works with 11,000 partners worldwide, including Salesforce, VMware, Fortinet, IBM, and Neo4j.

“By continuing to support our partners’ business expansion, we can build an inclusive ecosystem benefiting partners and customers,” said Selina Yuan, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International President, on Thursday at the 2022 Alibaba Cloud Summit.

Alibaba Cloud also unveiled during the summit customer service centers in Kuala Lumpur, Portugal, and Mexico City to support local customers with cloud migration and consulting services. It also said it had signed close to 30 agreements with local partners to provide advanced digital innovation, such as metaverse capabilities.

Alibaba.com Helps American SMEs Gain Visibility and Tackle Logistics Challenges

Alibaba’s B2B platform Alibaba.com announced its second annual small business grants program, the “Manifest Grants Program”, to provide grants and logistics support to 50 businesses in the U.S..

The program will provide $10,000 cash grants and $5,000 of logistics support to 50 small businesses. One final winner will be selected in February from the recipients to receive additional funding.

This is the second year of the “Manifest Grants Program.” The first edition of the program last year awarded a $10,000 grant to 50 small businesses selected from a pool of more than 12,000 applicants. Of those awarded grants, nearly 80% were owned by entrepreneurs of color, and 78% were founded by women.

Other perks for this year’s grant recipients include a one-on-one mentorship session with Manifest Grants Program Executive Mentor Daymond John and crowdfunding campaign consultations with Indiegogo.

Apply to the grant program here

Alibaba Rolls Out Deeper Immersive Luxury Shopping Experience In The Metaverse

Alibaba is multiplying how luxury brands can connect with China’s affluent shoppers in the metaverse with a series of digital upgrades and events this month.

Alibaba’s luxury shopping platform, Tmall Luxury Pavilion, is hosting an augmented reality (AR) fashion show and introducing a Meta Pass, which confers priority digital access to brands’ products, from Burberry to Bogner.

In recent years, the platform has already deployed 3D shopping, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) try-on for products, digital avatars, and digital collectibles.

Also, this month in Shanghai, luxury executives attended an awards ceremony and explored an exhibition on extended reality (XR) to visualize retail’s future.

Read more here

China’s Bosideng Is Riding Outdoor Sports Craze to Fuel Global Growth

Mountaineers sporting down jackets made by China’s Bosideng have scaled Everest: this brand has topped the China market and is building its brand overseas.

Like its customers, Bosideng has weathered storms. After over-extending itself and retrenching, the brand of the down jacket is now hyper-focused on the global premium market to rival brands such as Canada Goose and Moncler.

Fueling its ambition is a global winter sports craze and a nimble omnichannel strategy in partnership with digital platforms such as Alibaba Group.

Read more here

Brunello Cucinelli’s Greater China General Manager Michael Huang on Luxury Trends in China

In this episode of Alicast, Michael Huang, General Manager for the Greater China region at Italian luxury brand Brunello Cucinelli talks with Alizila’s Managing Editor, Alison Tudor-Ackroyd, about luxury trends in the world’s second-largest economy.

The Brunello Cucinelli’s no-label brand and nonchalantly elegant style is sported by Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley executives.

Huang talks on Alicast about Brunello Cucinelli’s fast-growing China business, where revenues grew eight-fold between 2011 and 2020. 

Catch the full podcast episode here

PMD Beauty Reaches Out To Chinese Consumers From Utah via Alibaba

Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, PMD Beauty has long been trying to crack the China market.

They decided to partner with Alibaba’s Tmall and build a flagship store where they can control their branding and operations.

Recently, through live streaming on Taobao Live, they were able to engage with over 50,000 Chinese consumers directly from their office in Utah.

The brand’s overseas success is helping the business grow and benefit the local community.

Watch the video here