Go Global: The other Amazons worldwide

Amazon may have been the original get-it-cheap-and-get-it-fast online retail giant, but other countries have their own versions, too, and many are open for American business.

In South Korea, the e-commerce giant Coupang, often called the Amazon of South Korea, just listed its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, according to Yahoo! Finance. Coupang has grown so universal in South Korea that according to Yahoo!, more than 70 percent of South Korea’s population lives within seven miles of a Coupang logistics center.

At the beginning of 2020, Coupang launched a global retail partner program, establishing teams and warehousing in California to makes U.S. product sales and distribution to Korea easy.

This makes it a prime market even for products from small businesses — not just its big vendors like Lego, Downy, Carter’s, and Gap, among others.

The Korean market is massive with $119 billion in sales expected this year. More than 99 percent of Coupang sales are delivered in one day, sometimes within hours.

In China, AliBaba rules both the retail and wholesale markets, according to Forbes. And just like Amazon, the company — named as the 31st biggest in the world by Forbes in 2020 — has its fingers in lots of other pies, too, including cloud computing, entertainment, web hosting, and other computing services.

In 2019, Alibaba opened up its platform to allow American companies to sell products to small and mid-size business buyers. Before that, U.S. businesses could only buy from Alibaba, not sell, according to CNN.

South America has its own e-commerce giant, too — The Argentina-based Mercado Libre provides an e-commerce marketplace and digital payments platform for developing markets, and according to PYMNTS, growth has been explosive, particularly with its digital payments platform. Experts are optimistic that Mercado Libre can play a key role in modernizing Latin America’s digital marketplace, which lags behind other countries. This is due in part to banking access issues — in Brazil, for example, just 25 percent of consumers have bank accounts.

Like Amazon, it offers logistics, warehousing, and online payments. It is present in 18 countries.

Its Global Selling Program allows international merchants to sell throughout Latin America, according to GeekSeller. Sellers receive pre-printed shipping labels from DHL, which eliminates the need for sellers to negotiate with other shipping providers.