MILAN, April 27 (Class Editori) -- More than a thousand SMEs subscribed to the initiative to exhibit their products on the Made-in-Italy Pavilion of Alibaba.com.
The huge feedback led the Italian Trade Agency (ITA) to raise the threshold of subscriptions by allowing a total amount of 950 companies to open a virtual store with a free 24-month membership by 2021.
Among the first 300 companies involved in the Made-in-Italy Pavilion project, 46 percent is based in Northern Italy, 29 percent in Southern Italy and Islands, and 25 percent in Central Italy.
The main product categories are Food & Beverage (26 percent), Home & Design (13 percent), Machinery (12 percent), Apparel (11 percent), Wine (9 percent) and Beauty (7 percent). According to analysis of the companies that already exhibit their products and catalogues on the Made-in-Italy Pavilion during the first ten days of activity and with about 5,000 available products, there have been about 200,000 visits to virtual stores and around 400 requests for information and quotes from five continents. The top three positions in terms of number of requests are held by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, followed by India, China, Australia, South Africa, England, Russia and France.
After less than one month of operation on the marketplace, among the companies that are already in the negotiation phase there are the artistic book publisher D'ORO Collection (Rome), the Tuscan shoe manufacturer Lady Kent (Florence) and RADICE (Monza-Brianza), a company specialized in furniture projects.
"Access to digital markets by companies, particularly SMEs, is now a priority for ITA as part of the implementation of the Pact for Export and the number of applications, as in this case, shows that we are going in the right direction," Carlo Maria Ferro, President of ITA, said. "Markets are recovering with an accelerated transition towards digitalization and new models of consumption. According to these elements, we have built a digital elevator for SMEs and the collaboration with Alibaba.com is an excellent example".
Rodrigo Cipriani Foresio, General Manager for Southern Europe of Alibaba Group, echoed his words, "The success of this latest initiative of the Made-in-Italy Pavilion on Alibaba.com is further proof that we have adopted the right approach by collaborating to enhance the value of Italian excellence in all fields, and it gives us hope that cooperation will involve many other Italian companies that want to open up to new markets where to export quality and unique products. Being a strong point of economic growth for SMEs makes us proud and is a driving force to do more and more". (All rights reserved)
(Source: Class Editori)
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