Alibaba Group Holding is expected to sell its department store chain Intime Retail (Group) to Chinese apparel company Youngor Fashion as China’s e-commerce giant walks away from offline retailing, according to people familiar with the matter.
The two sides are expected to announce the deal this week, said one source, who declined to be named. Detailed terms of the deal remain unknown.
Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Younger, the textile and clothing company based in the eastern city of Ningbo, did not immediately respond to a similar request.
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If confirmed, Alibaba’s divestment would come seven years after it teamed up with Intime’s founder to take the mainland shopping centre and department store chain operator private in a HK$19.8 billion (US$2.5 billion) cash transaction.
A woman walks past an Intime Lotte Department Store in downtown Beijing, January 10, 2017. Photo: Reuters alt=A woman walks past an Intime Lotte Department Store in downtown Beijing, January 10, 2017. Photo: Reuters>
At the time, the deal was hailed as part of Alibaba’s “new retailing” push to combine online and offline businesses. Before the privatisation, Alibaba invested US$692 million in Hong Kong-listed Intime as part of a series of business expansion initiatives made by the group months before its initial public offering in New York in September 2014.
Since last year, Alibaba has been adjusting its sprawling e-commerce empire to refocus on core businesses, putting many noncore assets up for sale. It has reportedly been considering the sale of the department store chain since earlier this year.
The reported Intime sale is part of Alibaba’s broader efforts that began last March to restructure its business empire and refocus on its bread-and-butter e-commerce and cloud businesses, as the company grapples with macroeconomic headwinds and heightened market competition.
Alibaba implemented a corporate restructuring in early 2023 that carved up its business empire into six units.
In its latest revamp, Alibaba merged its domestic and overseas e-commerce operations into one unit, furthering its effort to seek greater synergy across its domestic and international supply chains under the leadership of Jiang Fan, who previously led the company’s global e-commerce unit.
