Catalan e-commerce company Trilogi succeeds in China

From http://www.viaempresa.cat/ca/notices/2013/08/trilogi-botigues-virtuals-amb-segell-catala-1984.php (in Catalan)

Trilogi is a company created in Igualada (Barcelona province) in 1999 that settled in China two years ago and that it is offering e-commerce solutions for Chinese companies. Màrius Rossell, founder of Trilogi, had a vision about the power of internet and he and his company specialized in creating virtual shops. Fourteen years later, Trilogi is expected to reach a total sales of 1.2 million euro in 2013 and among its clients there are some big companies like Media Markt, Muebles La Fábrica, Roche and the sports shoe company Munich.

After a failure in trying to internationalize TLG (Trilogi's international brand) in European Union markets, where they were not able to sell a single on-line shop, Màrius Rossell decided to give China a try. He realized that Spanish companies did not have a negative perception in China as they had in some European markets, so they decided to follow the same strategy in China with Baidu that they had previously followed in Spain with Google, aiming at a having a good SEO. With a team of 5 people, 4 of them from China, TLG's Beijing office has already been able to sell 20 on-line shops, having an average of 3-4 new clients every month.

Apart from the shop itself, TLG also offers additional services to their Chinese customers, such as the online promotion of their brands or managing their presence in the social networks Weibo and Renren, the equivalents of Twitter and Facebook in the Asian giant. TLG's strategy to keep on growing on the Chinese markets is to find local partners in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Guangzhou.

According to Màrius Rossell, there are several reasons to think that in the next few years online shops will grow in China: i) it's a country with a high percentage of young people who are used to buy online products; ii) in some cities it is difficult to find some products, so the internet is an easy and effective solution; iii) many Chinese small and medium companies are in the growing phase and they need an online shop. However, there are other reasons that may cause this growth to be slower than expected, like: i) some Chinese people do not invest in e-commerce because they think it is not profitable enough; ii) opposite to the customers, a high percentage of Chinese businessmen are not into the world of internet and social networks; iii) the cost for an European company to land in China is quite high due to the language and cultural barriers, which cause extra expenses.