AliExpress frantically seizes Amazon brand merchants

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Wang Xiaojun

Once upon a time, Amazon was almost the go-to option for global brands going overseas. However, after nearly a year and a half of efforts in brand overseas expansion, Alibaba's cross-border e-commerce platform AliExpress is rapidly rising as another important battleground for brands going global, and now it has the confidence to directly challenge Amazon.

On September 23, AliExpress announced that its brand overseas expansion strategy has upgraded from "100 billion subsidies for brands going overseas" to the "Super Brand Overseas Expansion Plan," and explicitly stated that it aims to recruit well-known brands, including Tmall brands and major sellers on Amazon.

This move not only signifies that supporting brands going overseas has become a top priority in AliExpress's strategy, but it also indicates that AliExpress is launching a direct challenge to Amazon, aiming to compete for the mid-to-high-end brand market.

It is worth mentioning that to attract more brand merchants to switch to its platform, AliExpress has made significant efforts regarding the costs that merchants are most concerned about, directly proclaiming, "Let merchants achieve higher transactions in key markets at half the cost of Amazon."

Yan Zhi, the person in charge of brand overseas expansion at AliExpress, pointed out that the commission charged by AliExpress averages around 8-10%, while Amazon's reaches 15-25%.

This upgrade in brand overseas expansion will undoubtedly be an important turning point in the development process of AliExpress.

Yan Zhi stated that the essence of this upgrade in brand overseas expansion is that AliExpress is making changes from the ground up, providing a systematic brand overseas expansion strategy, transitioning from brands adapting to platform operational requirements and relying on major promotions for explosive growth, to the platform driving brand upgrades from the bottom up.

Specifically, for consumers, AliExpress will launch a "Brand+" exclusive channel, enhancing brand awareness and trust through genuine product certification, free shipping, and price protection mechanisms.

These arrangements are all aimed at making consumers feel more secure when purchasing high-ticket items on AliExpress. Yan Zhi pointed out that the decision-making cost for consumers buying a $200 item is different from that for a $2 item, so AliExpress must provide a better experiential solution for users in this regard.

"Of course, in this aspect, I believe we still have a certain distance from Amazon, but at least we can achieve a level of 70-80% of what they offer."

For merchants, AliExpress will also launch a "Brand Service Center," providing hourly updated advertising performance data, channel conversion analysis, and brand audience accumulation capabilities, allowing brands to achieve refined operations.

According to reports, AliExpress focuses on serving over 2,000 global brands, primarily excellent Chinese brands, while also opening up some local brands in regions like Spain and Poland, where it is expanding into local markets.

On the marketing front, AliExpress has opened its platform's years of accumulated local marketing capabilities to brands. For example, it collaborated with Pop Mart to hold an offline music festival in Spain, helping brands connect deeply with local consumers.

At the same time, in the context of AI reshaping various industries, AliExpress will also provide brand merchants with a complete set of exclusive AI tools for brand e-commerce, helping them reduce costs and increase efficiency AliExpress's efforts to support brands going overseas can be traced back to April last year, when it launched the "Billion Subsidy for Brands Going Overseas" initiative, viewing it as a key project for 2024. Last year's overseas Double Eleven shopping festival also saw AliExpress's billion subsidy participate for the first time.

It is reported that in the first half of this year, the number of new brands joining the AliExpress platform increased by 72% year-on-year, with over 500 brands achieving doubled sales, and more than 2,000 brands expanding into new overseas markets through AliExpress.

In addition, Yan Zhi revealed that the transaction volume of brand goods and high unit price products on the AliExpress platform has gradually surpassed that of some mid-to-low unit price products. "Today, viewing brands as a product category, brand attribute products have become a growth engine for AliExpress."

With the changing global trade landscape, there is a consensus that cross-border e-commerce will inevitably shift from growth at all costs to a focus on profitable growth, transitioning from purely "low-price exports" to a high value-added strategy of "branding."

Against this backdrop, going overseas is transitioning from the "selling goods era" to the "branding era." Yan Zhi has also stated that only brands can transcend economic cycles and truly conduct future business, allowing the cross-border industry to bid farewell to low-end production and create more consumer demand and revenue-generating solutions.

This is also why AliExpress increasingly emphasizes its capability to empower brands and proposes to become a global brand e-commerce marketplace.

"AliExpress will become the second growth curve for brands going overseas, providing brands with a new choice when deciding to go abroad." In Yan Zhi's view, Amazon is currently a larger-scale e-commerce platform serving Chinese brands, but AliExpress, originating from Alibaba, has accumulated a wealth of experience in serving Chinese brand e-commerce domestically. This experience has been validated over the past couple of years, proving effective in cross-border contexts.

In line with the demand for building global brands and the impact of global tariff fluctuations, the overseas hosting model has also become a significant tool that AliExpress provides to brand merchants.

Under the "overseas hosting" model, merchants are responsible for stocking goods in overseas warehouses, while the platform handles subsequent marketing promotion and user operations. Logistics fulfillment is completed by certified warehouses or third-party service providers, with the platform ensuring link efficiency through system integration.

Surrounding the "Super Brand Program," AliExpress has systematically upgraded its overseas hosting, including service coverage in 30 countries, where stocked overseas goods immediately receive a "Local+" label for easier consumer identification of local inventory. The platform will also enhance the exposure efficiency of overseas hosted products through core resources such as homepage pop-ups and search weighting.

Wu Chang, head of AliExpress's overseas hosting business, believes that the combination of brand going overseas and overseas hosting is a winning strategy for 2025.

The global cross-border e-commerce market is changing rapidly, and competition is entering a new phase of "thick profits + strong brands." At this time, only platforms that can operate more finely and help merchants solidify brand value are likely to become one of the winners in the future