To AliFest, and Beyond

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In a couple of days several Auctivians—including myself, Product Analyst Rebecca Miller, CEO Jeff Schlicht, Vice President Kevin Kinell, Communications Manager Robert Green and others—will all journey to the home office of our new parent company Alibaba Group in Hangzhou, China.

While Jeff and Kevin visited Hangzhou during the acquisition process, the purpose of the rest of us visiting there now is twofold. First, this gives us a change to visit the headquarters operation, and meet our new colleagues who work there. In a nutshell, the trip is an orientation for us. But there is more to it than just orientation. We’re there to absorb everything we can about sourcing products so we can be of the most assistance to Auctiva’s sellers.

The second purpose for our trip is to represent Auctiva at Alibaba’s 11th annual AliFest, which is a truly global event.

Not only small business people from countries around the world attend, but also global thought leaders and luminaries. In past years, former President Bill Clinton, Los Anglese Laker’s star player Kobe Bryant and Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz have made keynote speeches. At this year’s AliFest, U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (aka The Governator) and eBay CEO John Donahoe will be featured speakers at the annual “Netrepreneur Summit,” an event within AliFest. To say the least, this is no small affair.

I must confess this trip is more than a little daunting to me—and I’m a pretty experienced international traveler. Just to travel from Chico to Hangzshou takes more than 13 hours over water from San Francisco to Hong Kong and then there’s another two-hour-plus flight to our final destination of Hangzhou.

This is my first time visiting China, and I’m very excited about going. I’m sure being there will seem new and exotic. Hangzhou was founded some 2,200 years ago, so this city is ancient. From the pictures I’ve seen, Hangzhou is beautiful, and much of it today appears modern and high tech. Within a few blocks of the Alibaba Group headquarters are the offices of several major international companies, including Bosch Power Tools, Manitowoc Company, Samsung, Nokia and FedEx, to name just a few.

We expect to return equipped with new tools and information about sourcing and how it can help Auctiva users make more money selling on eBay. And I expect we will also return with some good stories and a few adventures to pass along to you via this blog.