B2B marketplace Alibaba.com has entered an agreement with four major logistics firms.
Alibaba.com is a leading B2B marketplace for global trade, with 450,000 members in over 200 countries. The company on Friday announced a revenue sharing deal with four global logistics providers to create a quotation and eContract platform for shipping and airfreight services, allowing the logistics companies to provide customers with online quotations. The four logistics companies are Atlantic Forwarding, Geodis, Panalpina and Schenker. Alibaba.com expects to launch the platform in the first half of 2001.
The logistics companies will respond to Requests for Quotation forms submitted by customers on the Alibaba.com website. If any deals are agreed upon, Alibaba.com will receive a commission. Alibaba.com’s strategy is to become a leading B2B trade community by targeting small and medium sized enterprises. Meanwhile, the four logistics companies will be able to expand their customer base by having access to Alibaba.com’s members.
There are several websites that offer similar freight quotation services to Alibaba.com, including nte.net, elogistics.com and cargofinder.com among others. For any site to succeed in this environment, deals like the one Alibaba.com has just negotiated are essential. Online freight quotation websites need to build sufficient volumes to be worth dealing with, which will then allow them to attract more and more customers.
Since there are so many quotation websites being established, it is very unlikely that only one will succeed in the market. The market is instead ultimately likely to mirror the current global freight forwarding market, which is characterized by a large number of players and a high degree of fragmentation. So the more such agreements a logistics player can sign and the more sites it deals with, the better.
