Nearly 40 years ago, a teenaged Ma greeted Thelen out front of the only hotel opened to foreigners in Hangzhou, China, offering to guide him to tour the city for free.
According to Ma, he spent about eight years offering free tours to foreign tourists just to practice English and listen to stories that were so alien to him at that time.
The audience burst into applause when Ma recalled his old days and what he did contrary to convention.
Ma said listed companies usually put shareholders' interest at the top of their priority list, but he reversed it by considering customers' interest first.
"If the customers are happy, the employees are happy, then the shareholders should be happy," he said, adding that it's unimaginable or even disastrous for a company when shareholders are happy but customers and employees are not.
FIGHTING COUNTERFEITS
Allegations from brands of widespread counterfeit goods on Taobao and Tmall Marketplace have long been the thorny problem for the company which Ma called a "cancer," and promised to do everything to solve.
Ma said Alibaba has invested heavily in technology, talents and resources to fight counterfeits.
"Afraid of our data tracking ability, people who make counterfeits are escaping from our platform," he said, elaborating that the company could now track who are buying, selling, and producing counterfeits.
To better protect intellectual property rights, Alibaba also plans to expand the scope of off-line cooperation with law enforcement agencies, and help identify and eliminate factories producing counterfeit goods.
U.S. SMEs ON TMALL
U.S. SME forerunners have benefitted from the vast Chinese market. About 7,000 U.S. brands, big and small, market and sell on Tmall today, including Nike, Apple, Starbucks, Victoria's Secret, Stadium Goods, LuckyVitamin, Jewelry.com and Real Techniques.
John McPheters, co-founder and CEO of Stadium Goods, said the company had its eyes set on China very early because collectible sneakers is a 6-billion-dollar industry and is particularly popular in China.
"We decided to partner with Tmall Global because it is a trusted platform and it is where Chinese consumers go to shop," said McPheters.
Sam Wolf, on the other hand, has just started to know about Chinese consumers. Having opened a Tmall Global store for around half a year, Wolf saw huge growth potentials for his products in China.
"Right now China is one of our top three overseas markets, and I won't be surprised if it becomes our largest market in the future," said Wolf, who founded LuckyVitamin, an online natural products retailer based in Pennsylvania.
