Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will boost its partnership with El Corte Inglés. The large department store group will offer click-and-collect for AliExpress customers early next year. From that moment, customers will be able to pick up their orders at El Corte Inglés stores.
The partnership between El Corte Inglés and Alibaba started in November 2018. The partnership spans physical retail, e-commerce, payments and cloud computing. William Wang, CEO of AliExpress in Portugal and Spain, now announced the new click-and-collect functionality. Wang also states that AliExpress and El Corte Inglés analyse other ways to collaborate in the future. A part of the Chinese e-commerce giant’s strategy is to establish partnerships with all kinds of Spanish companies, not just retailers. Therefore, AliExpress Business was launched in Spain in October 2019. With this, Alibaba aims to help Spanish companies to sell their products in e.g. China.
Physical stores
Last August, AliExpress opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Madrid, Spain. This was the companies’ first physical store in Europe. Wang states this has been a positive experience for the company so far. Rumours state that the Chinese e-commerce giant is working on opening a second store, this time in Barcelona. However, this is yet to be confirmed.