“eBay is a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we will lose — but if we fight in the river, we win.”
These words were famously uttered by Alibaba founder Jack Ma about Taobao, the ecommerce giant’s online shopping platform, which was at war to displace its US rival in China. His colourful prediction was borne out when eBay closed down its China site, EachNet, in 2007.
eBay’s dramatic decline in China has since been enshrined as a business school case study on the peril of international companies failing to account for local tastes. When Taobao launched in 2003, EachNet held more than 70 per cent of the ecommerce market share. Five years later, Taobao had more than 80 per cent of the market share and was the undisputed king of the Yangtze River.