According to the Sina Technology news, on April 18, the famous Chinese online shopping website Lightinthebox.com submitted an IPO application (the F1-form) to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. This is a big move for all China-based international online retailers, not just for the company, though it is hard to say whether they can be successfully listed or not so far.
The prospectus of Lightinthebox.com shows that they have become profitable since the Q4 of 2012. It seems many people have deep doubts on the claim as it is not a secret that rare e-commerce websites have really turned profitable, including the most famous Chinese domestic e-commerce websites like Jd.com.
Lightinthebox.com is the first Chinese company to list on the New York Stock Exchange in 2013. They apply for the IPO under the stock exchange code “litb” and offer a rather low fund raising goal with only $86,250,000 USD. This means they won’t get much difficulty finding investors if they successfully go public.
I feel happy for the site even though I am a complete outsider. I can image how exciting their employees are when they saw their company had finally filed for an IPO. They must have been waiting for years to make the dream come true and at the same time, have been working really hard for that goal. If they make it, it will be a definite breakthrough in the Chinese retail foreign trade arena. As a common Chinese person who loves the online foreign trade e-commerce industry, I am proud of them, the most powerful competitor of my previous employer DHgate.
Yesterday, my old boss Diane Wang, the CEO of DHgate.com posted an article on Sina Weibo, sharing her insights into the topic about Lightinthebox IPO. According to her points, she believes that if the Lightinthebox IPO can go smoothly, it will bring three major benefits to the Chinese international e-commerce development: 1) intriguing a passion among Chinese merchants to go for foreign trade business; 2) raising the awareness of Chinese manufacturers or suppliers about online export, and 3) empowering Chinese domestic e-commerce enterprises to weed out world giants like Amazon.com or Ebay.com in the battle of attracting customers from all over the world who are interested in buying things directly from Chinese sites.
The Lightinthebox.com is a global online retailer founded in 2007. They started their online business from selling wedding apparel including wedding dresses, bridesmaid dresses, mother-of-the-bride dresses and more. Now their product line has been greatly expanded with other categories such as women’s fashion, electronics, home and garden, toys and hobbies, sports & outdoors and more. In particular, apparel and accessories are still their major field with an over 40% share of the whole business range and electronic gadgets and accessories come next.
Lightinthebox serves global buyers in 17 languages including English, Spanish, Russian, Japanese and more. Among the over 1,000 employees, there are a good number of foreigners who work for the company to provide better service for the target language speaking customers. Currently their biggest markets are the Northern American market and the European market while their other minor markets are growing quickly in recent years.
As an e-commerce firm Lightinthebox.com attracts global customers mainly through online marketing approaches like Google Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, forums, affiliates, etc. They support Paypal and all mainstream credit cards for payment and use reliable shipping companies such as UPS, DHL or Federal Express to deliver orders.
For more detailed information about Lightinthebox.com, please read the detailed review of the site.