According to a report from LatePost, Kaola, a cross-border e-commerce company that Alibaba just purchased, has decreased its staff from about 400 last year to less than 20 in July. The portal now focuses on selling mother- and baby-care products in addition to aesthetic products.
The change follows a story that went around among Kaola employees early this year, claiming that the company needed to break even or risk closing down in September.
The company’s gross merchandise value (GMV) for the year was less than 3 billion yuan (US $440.7 million), which is significantly less than that of Tmall Global, which reached 60 billion yuan (US $8.8 billion) over the same time period.
Alibaba paid NetEase, a Chinese internet business, $2 billion in 2019 to purchase Kaola. For the previous four years, Kaola had dominated the market for cross-border e-commerce companies, with a market share of 27.7% in the first half of 2019 and a GMV of 30 billion yuan (US $4.4 billion) in 2017. According to reports, the acquisition was done to prevent Alibaba’s rivals from acquiring the business.
