Alibaba Gets Into The Garment Manufacturing Business

Alibaba Gets Into Garment Manufacturing Business

As most companies rush to grow their online presence, Alibaba is actively seeking to expand its offline footprint through its new manufacturing division, Xunxi.

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    The Chinese tech giant recently opened three new “smart” factories catering to online brands that need to boost their manufacturing capabilities. The initiative is being run by Xunxi in conjunction with Alibaba’s eCommerce site Taobao, according to Reuters.

    “A lot of these small and medium-sized brands, their advantage is that they can adapt to changes in the market and meet consumer demand, but their disadvantage is in manufacturing, because their technology and skills are limited,” Xunxi CEO Alain Wu told Reuters at a media event for Alibaba’s mammoth annual shopping event, Singles’ Day.

    Alibaba plans to grow the division by getting companies to use its services and learning which of its technologies can be scaled up, rather than just building more factories, said Reuters, citing Wu.

    China’s Singles’ Day, which is scheduled for Nov. 11, is a 24-hour shopping marathon that boasts the biggest sales on earth of any day of the year. A recent survey of Chinese consumers by AlixPartners found that while shoppers have favored buying Chinese goods this year for patriotic reasons, foreign retailers should also enjoy a healthy sales boost.

    In addition to garment plants, Alibaba also operates a 100-plus store supermarket chain called Freshippo, along with a hotel and shopping mall in Hangzhou, China. The conglomerate has also launched a product sourcing and data analytics service for convenience stores, according to Reuters.


    Regions Financial: Tech Investments Drove 10% YOY Revenue Growth

    Regions Financial Corp.’s investments in technology and talent drove 10% year-over-year growth in revenue in the second quarter, bringing the regional bank’s total revenue for the quarter to $1.9 billion, according to a Friday (July 18) earnings release.

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      “We are very proud of our second-quarter performance as we continue to reap the benefits of the investments we’ve made across our businesses and the successful execution of our strategic plans,” Regions Financial Corp. Chairman, President and CEO John Turner said Friday during the company’s quarterly earnings call.

      Regions Financial Corp., whose Regions Bank subsidiary serves customers across the South, Midwest and Texas, has seen the benefits of these investments across its businesses, according to a presentation released Friday.

      In its corporate business, the bank is using natural language processing and other technologies to screen public filings and evaluate product opportunities for large corporate clients, according to the presentation.

      In its consumer business, Regions Financial reskilled and reallocated bankers to focus on opportunities with small businesses and key customer segments, conducted financial education workshops, and centralized processes to save over 200,000 hours and allow bankers to focus on serving customers. In addition, the bank’s improvements to its digital funnel drove 10% year-to-date growth in digital channel checking.

      Over the past two years, the bank saw its number of mobile banking active users rise 6%, the number of mobile banking logins gain 14% and the share of customer transactions conducted through digital channels increase from 74% to 78%.

      In its wealth management business, Regions Financial completed a new cloud-based portal to improve infrastructure for its current and future applications serving this segment, enhanced its advisors’ customer relationship management (CRM) systems and fully launched a social media program on LinkedIn. In the wealth management segment, the bank earned a record nominal interest rate (NIR) during the quarter and grew its total number of wealth management relationships by 8.3% compared to last year.

      Across the bank’s operations, the efficiencies delivered by technology and normal attrition among the workforce will help to pay for continuing investments in technology, Regions Financial Chief Financial Officer David Turner said during Friday’s earnings call.

      “We just have to continue to look for ways to become more efficient,” Turner said. “We and the industry have to do a better job of leveraging all the new technologies that are coming at us pretty rapidly and let our attrition, which is about 6% to 7% of our workforce every year, help pay for some of this technology.”

      Looking ahead, Regions Financial will continue to modernize its core technology platforms, Turner said during the call.

      “We’ve begun rolling out a new native mobile app in just the past few weeks, and we’re planning to upgrade our commercial loan system to a new cloud platform in the coming months,” Turner said. “We plan to begin running pilots on our new cloud-based deposit system beginning in late 2026, with full conversion anticipated in 2027. Once completed, we expect to be one of the first regional banks in the country on a truly modern core platform.”