(Yicai) May 16 -- International e-commerce giant Amazon Global Selling has opened its office in Wuhan, China’s central Hubei province, to provide regional merchants with cross-border e-commerce services.

The Wuhan office that opened yesterday will provide full-link cross-border e-commerce services to over 5,000 local companies in Hubei and two other neighboring provinces within three years, Yicai learned at the opening ceremony yesterday.

Industrial zones and clusters with cross-border export potential in global consumer sectors, such as home furnishing, textile and apparel, automotive parts, medical devices, and equipment manufacturing, formed in the region surrounding Wuhan have shown great business development potential, said Song Xiaojun, vice president of Amazon China and head of Amazon Global Selling’s Chinese merchant expansion.

On May 10, Amazon Global Selling opened another regional officer in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Hubei’s neighboring Henan province.

Amazon believes that there are great opportunities in central China, given its foreign trade size, industrial belt, service provider system, and government attention, so it is worth adopting a dual-office model, Song told Yicai.

Wuhan and Zhengzhou have their specialties in terms of key industries, Song pointed out when explaining the necessity of opening two offices in central China. Henan is more prominent in light industries, including wig and make-up brush manufacturing, while Wuhan has attracted more high-tech industries, such as optoelectronic information, life and health, new energy vehicles, and intelligent connected vehicles.

Therefore, the two offices will hire talents with different expertise to cope with different customer demand, Song noted, adding that Amazon will prioritize the selection of local industries that are most suitable for cross-border e-commerce and strive to create 100 globally recognized brands in the next two to three years.

Amazon’s global online net sales value rose 7 percent to USD54.7 billion in the first quarter of the year from a year earlier, with the sales growth of Chinese vendors far exceeding the average of global third-party sellers, according to data provided by the company. Amazon has opened 19 overseas sites to Chinese merchants, helping them reach consumers in over 200 countries and regions.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione