Not just words and blah blah blah
Welcome to "nouveau monde", a four-handed newsletter to better understand how to make the world better through the lens of retail. This is #57. It's still going, Dad.
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What about Alibaba
by Phil
Alibaba has been all over the news these years, following the path of a blooming (and quite invading) technology path. Of course, the potential of its domestic market helped somehow to become one of the biggest e-commerce company in the world.
“Founded in 1999 as an online B2B wholesaler, Alibaba Group has been China’s irrefutable e-commerce king over the past two decades. The company’s tech empire stretches across B2B, B2C, and C2C e-commerce, cloud computing, local service, logistics, and financial services. In 2020, Alibaba’s online retail properties took up a quarter of the global e-commerce market, nearly doubling the market share that Amazon had. However, challenged by China’s ever-strengthening anti-monopoly law and competition from the rising social commerce companies, Alibaba has shown signs of losing its throne. As of 2022, Alibaba’s market value vanished to 237.8 billion U.S. dollars, nearly 75 percent less than its peak.”. Thank you Yihan.
The "Amazon of China" is still a lot smaller than its American counterpart. “Alibaba and Amazon are superficially similar, but their business models are very different. Alibaba generates most of its revenue and all of its profits from its commerce business, which houses its online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar stores, and logistics business. The profits from the commerce segment support the ongoing expansion of its unprofitable cloud, digital media, and innovation initiatives businesses.”
Amazon generates most of its revenue from its retail business, which also operates online marketplaces and brick-and-mortar stores. However, Amazon generates most of its profits from its cloud infrastructure platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS' profits enable Amazon to expand its e-commerce and digital media ecosystems with low-margin and loss-leading strategies.
What about Alibaba Cloud? Is it sustainable? Alibaba ‘blends retail with technology’ to build green supply chains.
Alibaba leverages its Energy Expert AI-powered energy management tool developed by Alibaba Cloud to provide companies with an emission management service to help lower their carbon footprint. So far, corporate giants Unilever and Nestle have partnered with Alibaba to enable more sustainable business practices.
What about you, consumer? Alibaba Group rolled out a carbon ledger that promotes greener lifestyles by rewarding consumers for adopting eco-friendly behavior. Consumers will earn points for making low-carbon choices within Alibaba’s ecosystem, such as buying energy-efficient appliances, recycling boxes, and declining disposable utensils with takeout orders. They can use the points to claim digital badges and shopping discounts on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms.
Not bad, huh?
More Than Words ?
by Anthony
Is this an historical agreement ? Will it become more than words or real acts that will change the course of (biodiversity thus) our lives ? 190 countries signed last december a strong agreement to preserve biodiversity says Le Monde (in French).
We’ve been focused on climate change and CO2 consumption recently, in this newsletter and mostly around the world but the massive loss of biodiversity probably is as bad. And of course, the two phenomenas are tightly linked.
What does this COP 15 in Montreal regarding biodiversity says ? The main objective is protect 30% of the planet by 2030. This could enable biodiversity to breathe a little (…) and engage a flip in the loss of species.
By the way, did you know the we depend on biodiversity on a wide varieties of matter :
we eat biodiversity (even if we consume mostly only 20 different species, we rely on it
our food mostly need other “wild” animals to grow (ever seen Bee moovie ?)
75% of our medicine comes from biodiversity
remember the pangolin ? (or the bat or whatever species that spread the coronavirus…)
and, well, maybe we should just recall that we just are biodiversity…
All of that should make us think a bit more about biodiversity and maybe it’s time to take a look at it in our professional life, by just asking ourselves : what do I (or my company) to arm biodiversity ? What do I do to let it grow ? What can I do to do better in the (near) future ?
It is as urgent as climate change, yes, we face multiple problems at the same time, but we, humans, are responsible people and will take our responsibility, I really believe in it…
Cheers :-)
Bonus track by Anthony
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