Alibaba Brushes Up on Big Data With Colgate Toothpaste Collaboration
Tang Shihua
DATE:  Jan 18 2019
/ SOURCE:  yicai
Alibaba Brushes Up on Big Data With Colgate Toothpaste Collaboration Alibaba Brushes Up on Big Data With Colgate Toothpaste Collaboration

(Yicai Global) Jan. 18 -- China's largest e-commerce player Alibaba Group Holding has teamed with Colgate-Palmolive to launch a new toothpaste using big data to shorten the product development process.

The pair developed a bead-based toothpaste aimed at male consumers, the Hangzhou-based firm said in a statement. The use of big data shortened the development process to six months from 18 months when using traditional methods.

The collaboration marks the first time that Colgate has developed new products based on big data. "Many multinational firms just introduce popular foreign products to China," said Qiu Zihan, a senior manager at Colgate's innovation center. "However, the era of 'Made in China' has ended and it is time for 'Made for China.'" 

Alibaba and New York-based Colgate-Palmolive have also inked an agreement to build a "consumer-to-business" innovation plant able to make new products based on consumers' demand, online Chinese business news outlet CNFOL reported.

The plan to develop a new toothpaste arose after Alibaba's premium retail platform Tmall carried out a consumer survey last year.

During trial production, Colgate-Palmolive operated refined production lines to make the toothpaste on a small scale and is now capable of making 100,000 tons of products per batch.

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Keywords:   Colgate,Alibaba