Alibaba's first Italian challenge is wine. “We are here to help Italian wine break through in China, and beyond,” he said at Vinitaly in Verona Jack Ma, second richest man in China and founder of the world's largest e-commerce platform, which became the world's largest retailer ahead of the US Wal-Mart.
Recently, recalled the oriental manager, 18 seconds were enough for him to pulverize one hundred Mercedes and one hundred Maserati, while only two years ago he benefited from a partnership with Alibaba it was Canada's lobsters: the Asian giant managed to sell 96 in just 5 hours. "Marco Polo took 8 years to get to and from China, today with the internet it takes 8 seconds," said Jack Ma.
The Chinese entrepreneur spoke yesterday in Verona at the fiftieth edition of Vinitaly to participate in a debate with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. A meeting, wanted by the Minister of Agricultural Policies Maurizio Martina and the President of Veronafiere Maurizio Danese, centered on the frontier of e-commerce as a tool for conquering the Chinese agri-food market. “In my country today there is a middle class of 300 million people who want to buy quality products and Italy has these products, it just needs to learn how to sell them – explained Ma – with over 400 million buyers a year, Alibaba covers over 80% of the Chinese web market made up of a total of 688 million active users”.
The challenge was taken up by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi: “In wine, Italy today holds a Chinese market share of just 6% against France's 55% – underlined Renzi – yet Italian wine is better than French. I told Hollande and he replied: maybe, but ours is more expensive. And I appreciated it for this, because it means that France is more skilled than Italy in describing its products: that's what we lack and we have to start from here for the future development of the Italian wine sector”. Hence the digital bet, a sort of agreement signed with Jack Ma, to push Made in Italy abroad, in line with the Government's objectives on agri-food exports: to achieve a turnover of 2020 billion euros by 50 , of which 7,5 with wine alone.
