Vendio Surpasses 50,000 Online Stores in Just Over a Year

SAN MATEO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Vendio Services continues to celebrate new milestones after being acquired by Alibaba.com (HKSE:1688) early last month. Today Vendio announced the rapid growth of its multi-channel e-commerce solution, which now powers online stores for more than 50,000 small and mid-sized merchants after launching just over a year ago.

“Vendio continues to innovate for our merchants’ benefit by converting our understanding of upcoming trends in mobile and social e-commerce into easy to use features accessible to all merchants.”

Vendio Stores provide merchants with a simple yet powerful solution complete with everything from an integrated free shopping cart to flexible shipping and payments options. More advanced users can customize their stores into practically any design in nearly any technology by leveraging Vendio’s robust application programming interfaces (APIs). Vendio Stores integrate into a larger multi-channel e-commerce Platform that syncs inventory, orders, and customer information across stores, eBay and Amazon.

Vendio offers this powerful online store builder completely free to merchants, with no hosting, listing, or transaction fees. The free online store includes unlimited item listings, sales, and bandwidth, which has enabled merchants to make 2 million+ items available for sale in their own stores. Most similar platforms charge a combination of monthly fees and some percentage of sales.

“We launched Crystal Rhinestone Boutique on Vendio about a year ago,” say Jeremy and July Donovan of Crystal Rhinestone Boutique. “Our sales have steadily increased each month. Thanks to Vendio, we now have the look of a top quality website with the business management tools to drive sales and keep track of everything it takes to run a successful ecommerce business – all for free.”

The e-commerce industry continues to innovate, supporting new social and mobile commerce capabilities. According to company earnings calls, eBay is targeting $1.5 billion in mobile sales in 2010 while Amazon surpassed $1 billion in the past 12 months. “We are at the early days of social shopping and new mobile experiences,” said Michael Levit, Vendio’s EVP of Marketing. “Vendio continues to innovate for our merchants’ benefit by converting our understanding of upcoming trends in mobile and social e-commerce into easy to use features accessible to all merchants.” For example, Vendio recently developed a Facebook application that allows merchants to promote the products in their Vendio Stores and sell them directly from their Facebook profile or fan page. Vendio Stores also support mobile commerce by automatically detecting mobile browsers and dynamically optimizing the buying experience.

The success of Vendio Stores can be attributed to a number of key factors:

Mobile Commerce: Vendio Stores are optimized for mobile consumption. While, according to Quantcast, only 1.6% of the Web is accessed via mobile devices, Clicktale reports that Vendio Stores already receive 3.6% of traffic from mobile devices.
Integrated Sourcing: A sourcing module through AliExpress.com is included with all stores, offering outstanding wholesale deals. Private sales, streamlined importing processes with buyer protections, and assisted negotiations with suppliers give Vendio merchants an edge.
Social Commerce: Vendio helps merchants capitalize on Facebook’s growing e-commerce capabilities and its 500 million potential customers by offering a Facebook application that enables merchants to sell items from a “Shop!” tab on their Facebook Profile or Fan Page. Merchants can also take their Store with them anywhere on the Web via an embeddable widget.
Technology: An enterprise class J2EE infrastructure powers all Vendio Stores to provide a robust feature set and enhanced transaction processing speed. Built for reliability, speed and security, Vendio Stores are SSL encrypted, TRUSTe certified and PCI compliant.
Flexibility: The Vendio Store was created so that merchants of all technical and design skill levels can quickly create a beautiful storefront. Novice merchants can pick from 40+ templates, intermediate merchants can customize their template via drag & drop functionality, and advanced merchants can edit or upload their own code.
Marketplaces Support: For a nominal price, Vendio offers a leading multi-channel selling solution and enables merchants to take their inventory and easily sell it on Amazon and eBay in addition to comparison shopping engines such as Google Product Search, Shopping.com and Shopzilla.
Free: Everything about the Vendio Store is free – images, hosting, and unlimited product listings. No ads support the site, and there are no transaction fees. While initially sounding a little “too good to be true,” Vendio Stores do not require a credit card to sign-up.

About Vendio Services, Inc., a division of Alibaba.com

Vendio, an Alibaba.com company (HKSE:1688) (1688.HK), is a leading e-commerce provider, offering a simple yet powerful Platform that helps merchants manage one set of inventory, orders, and customer information that is automatically synced across Amazon, eBay, their own free Vendio store, and more. Together with Alibaba.com and AliExpress (www.aliexpress.com), Vendio provides merchants everything they need to sell online, from research to sourcing to multichannel selling. Alibaba.com makes it easy for millions of buyers and suppliers around the world to do business, forming a community of more than 53 million registered users in more than 240 countries and regions. Vendio alone has more than 80,000 merchants selling nearly $2 billion in merchandise. Vendio also operates Dealio (www.dealio.com), a shopping and coupons site for consumers. Alibaba.com has offices in more than 60 cities across Greater China, India, Japan, Korea, Europe and the United States including Vendio’s headquarters in San Mateo, CA.

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