Alibaba.Com’s logo is mostly covered in orange. The only part left out is the outline of the face in the emblem which is black. Many, people seem to have a lot of opinions on why the Alibaba logo is ugly. A common comment about this logo is that it looks unprofessional. But, there is also a possibility that people don’t understand the concept of the logo.
Key Takeaways
- Alibaba is the world’s largest e-commerce company with more than 700 million active users on its internet interface known as website
- Some of Alibaba’s internet interfaces are Alibaba.com, Tmall, Aliexpress, and Taobao
- The Alibaba.Com logo has a smiley face which is placed in a lowercase cursive
- The human face on the Alibaba logo is the face of a satisfied customer after trusting Alibaba.Com
History Of The Alibaba Empire
In a nutshell, we could say that the history of the Alibaba empire all started with Jack Ma in 1999. Jack Ma gathered and steered a group of 18 tech geniuses to help create this amazing vision. Jack Ma’s vision was born out of the lack of internet e-commerce space in China. This means that his major aim was to create something that would benefit all. Jack Ma and his group worked on creating an online marketplace that would serve internet users in China.
Just like most companies, Alibaba started small. Little to no investment added, no efficient office space, it was majorly just a humble beginning. Also, like most companies, there are co-founders. Jack Ma who has lived in the United States of America saw the future in e-commerce businesses and how fast they grow. Therefore, he decided to create something similar to this kind of business in China.
According to Jack Ma, his career ambitions were a bit different before he decided to go into internet e-commerce. Jack Ma was born in September 1964, he also always wanted to be an English language teacher. He wanted to venture into English teaching because it was in high demand in China. He saw a career in teaching English as an amazing career path to follow.
Guess what happened. Jack Ma finally got his dream job and started teaching English. Surprisingly, he didn’t teach for too long before he left that line of work and ventured into business. Again, he left business and traveled to the United States of America. Also, he didn’t stay for too long in the business world. He went to the United States with the hope of getting into Harvard University. He had made the decision of enrolling in Harvard after he had been rejected for a manager’s post at KFC in China.
Just like most of his other dreams, the Harvard dream also went down the drain. He couldn’t go on with this dream when he started using the internet. That was when he noticed the e-commerce business booming in the United States. He also, saw that there were no companies like that in China. He started by creating a website that focused on e-commerce for China. His idea was amazing and so it started attracting Chinese investors rapidly.
Furthermore, the investors that he attracted all shared his vision of an e-commerce company located far east. Apart from this, he also went ahead and started a company that he called China pages. China pages managed to reach one million dollars just after three years. With the money Jack Ma made from China pages, his vision of an e-commerce market for China was looking bright. However, that money wasn’t enough to start such a big company as Alibaba. Therefore, Jack Ma decided to approach a bunch of investors from which he was able to get 35 million dollars. After all the hassle and struggling to get funding, Jack Ma finally started his company in 1999 with his partners.
Alibaba Shifting Into Higher Gear
Jack Ma’s timing was great for the creation of this new company. What better time to start an e-commerce company than the beginning of the 21st century. This was just when consumers started to fall in love with the concept of online shopping. Also, the number of people in China helped the company grow.
Before Alibaba was introduced, the Chinese had heard about Amazon and eBay, therefore, they were looking for something like that in their country. Jack Ma provided what the people needed. Another thing is that the switch from a communist system to capitalism helped improve the consumer market. This means that most of the consumers were people who had just gotten decent jobs as a result of capitalism. Consumers had enough money to spend.
Not too long after the launch of Alibaba, the company was able to get extra funds from other ventures. The funds from these other ventures were used to create new websites. Among those that were created, the most popular was Taobao. Taobao was a little different because it was a customer-to-customer marketplace. It was similar to eBay. Not long after Taobao, they also created Aliwangwang. Aliwangwang was an instant messaging app that connected consumers to shops that could provide the best deals online. Then they created Alipay, Alipay was an online payment platform. It similar to skrill, PayPal, and other payment platforms. These were not the only companies but with these and others, Alibaba was able to rule the Asian e-commerce terrain.
The Alibaba Logo And The History
There hasn’t been a logo for the Alibaba empire since the company first started in 1999. This logo was introduced in 2020. The Alibaba logo is made up of very simple symbols. Firstly, it has a smiley face which is placed in a lower case cursive. Also, the wordmark “Alibaba.com” is underneath the smiley face.
In addition, the company doesn’t care much about change. Most of the Alibaba company concepts are not really different from when they started. However, there might be some slight differences. Speaking of not changing, the company logo is at the left of a wordmark which is Alibaba group and not Alibaba.com. There is also a Chinese inscription below the wordmark.
On the Alibaba website, Alibaba.com is what appears with the logo. Most customers seem to prefer that more than the official logo that has Alibaba group.
Alibaba Logo Symbol
The major part of the logo is the large letter, “a”, in lowercase. Also, a human face inside the logo. They say the human face is the face of a satisfied customer after trusting Alibaba group. Below this design is the word Alibaba.com or Alibaba group written in small-sized letters.
Alibaba Logo Font
The logo entirely has two font types. Universe and Pluto Sans, are the two fonts used for the wordmark underneath the design. To be more specific, the first font is Linotype Universe Com 740 extended heavy. The other font is the Pluto sans regular which was developed by a designer called Hannes von Dohren.
Conclusion
So far, this logo has sparked up a lot of remarks. So many criticisms from the design committee talking about how unprofessional and ugly the Alibaba logo is. Clearly the logo is said to have a symbol, it doesn’t matter how unprofessional it might look.
References:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/07/17/alibaba-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/alibaba-billionaire-jack-ma-i-know-nothing-about-tech-or-marketing.html
Last Updated on November 5, 2022 by Magalie D.
Magalie D. is a Diploma holder in Public Administration & Management from McGill University of Canada. She shares management tips here in MGTBlog when she has nothing to do and gets some free time after working in a multinational company at Toronto.
