China's e-commerce titan Alibaba
said Tuesday it is selling its US shopping subsidiary 11 Main only a
year after launching it, having reportedly failed to gain traction in
the market.
The site will
be sold to US firm OpenSky, Alibaba said in a statement without putting a
value on the deal. It said it would retain a
minority stake in the
combined entity, which would carry 50,000 brands.
The statement did not specify the stake size or give reasons for the sale.
Reports
said Alibaba would also sell to Opensky three support and logistic
subsidiaries for 11 Main -- Auctiva, Vendio and SingleFeed.
When
11 Main was launched in June last year Alibaba's chairman of US
investments Michael Zeisser said it "brings something incredibly unique
to the US market".
Alibaba has a hugely dominant position in
Chinese e-commerce, with its Tmall.com platform believed to command more
than half the Chinese market for business-to-consumer transactions. Its
Taobao platform holds more than 90 percent of the consumer-to-consumer
market.
But its overseas expansion has remained slow, although it
acquired a more than nine percent stake in US online retailer Zulily in
May.
"We wish to have 40 percent business in overseas market, so
far our overseas business only accounts for two percent," its founder
and executive chairman Jack Ma said in New York this month.
The
company, based in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, completed the
world's biggest IPO last September with a listing on the New York Stock
Exchange that raked in $25 billion.
The IPO was priced at $68 and
the shares rocketed to $120 in November. But since then they have been
hammered by poor third-quarter results and a row with Chinese
authorities who accused Alibaba of allowing imitation goods to be sold
on its platform.
