Taobao Mall calls media pitch in China

OMD, MEC and ZenithOptimedia are believed to have taken part in the presentations yesterday.

Taobao Mall is one of the largest online shopping sites in Asia selling a wide variety of products including clothing, beauty, houseware, food, CDs and books.

Many large retail brands including Dell, Lenovo, Hewlett-Packard, Yili, Mengniu, Midea and Procter & Gamble have opened an online store on Tabao since its launch in March 2008.

Earlier this month Taobao signed a deal with Adidas to open its first online flagship store on the B2C e-commerce platform. Similarly, Uniqlo joined forces with Taobao to set up a flagship store supporting its e-commerce shoppers in the mainland during April last year.

Taobao announced plans at the start of the year to launch authorised offline stores to reach out to consumers unable to shop online in China. According to local reports, the first batch of 150 offline stores will begin operations in Hangzhou and Zhejiang. There are plans to deploy over 30,000 more stores in communities and schools across the country before the end of 2010.