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Alibaba beefs up home furnishing services

Alibaba’s home decoration unit said it has teamed up with 30 partners in the home furnishing industry to provide door-to-door service as a part of the effort of the e-commerce giant to beef up offline services.

Thanks to its extensive logistics network, Alibaba and partners are hoping that door-to-door home decoration and installation services for consumers will cover more than 2,100 counties nationwide by the end of this year, compared with only 314 counties in 2014.

"By allowing consumers to select home decoration vendors as well as service providers we hope to build a comprehensive platform for both merchandise and services as we found out consumers are placing more emphasis on service in the home decoration sector," general manager Wang Licheng of Tmall’s home decoration unit told an industry forum during the 20th Kitchen and Bath China Exhibition in Shanghai last week.

(Source: Shanghai Daily)