A New York Times profile of Peggy Yu, who is looking to make Dangdang.com, China’s biggest online bookseller, the Amazon.com of China.
While Ms. Yu’s business has grown quickly, analysts and publishing executives are still skeptical that her company will thrive soon in a country where the Internet and the exchange of free information remain subject to the whims of China’s authorities, and where people are still reluctant to order online.
In a country where only 8 million out of 68 million Internet users have ever shopped online, Ms. Yu says that the learning curve has been steep.
“It’s really a great leap forward from visiting a physical store to shopping online,” she said. “Half the calls we get are `How do you order online? What does it mean by shopping cart?’ ”
It has been equally daunting to convince consumers to use plastic over cash, especially given the complicated rules for credit cards drawn up by banks in some areas. So Dangdang uses 30 bicycle courier companies in 12 cities to deliver the products and collect the cash, which is then wired to Dangdang.
Better late than never
Nice to see that the Times is finally catching up with The Economist. It wrote about Dangdang back in the Aug 21 issue. Unfortunately, the story is only available online for subscribers