Business
For better or for worse, everyone knows Amazon. But Alibaba? China's leading e-commerce player is still relatively unknown in the West. For many consumers the name probably still conjures up 40 thieves rather than an online retailer with global ambitions.Our readers, of course, know that Alibaba is a digital giant and a bit like Amazon, PayPal and Twitter all rolled into one. The Hangzhou-based company founded by legendary entrepreneur Jack Ma in 1999 is also growing like a supernova. According to Edge Retail Analysis, it still ranks only number 22 among Europe's top retailers by sales, but these jumped 24.5 per cent last year, outpacing even Amazon.The corporate boilerplate is certainly ambitious: "Our mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. We aim to build the future infrastructure of commerce. We envision that our customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that it will be a company that lasts at least 102 years."Why, though, 102 years and not 91 or 203 years? Perhaps Alibaba president Mike Evans will enlighten us...