(Yicai Global) April 13 -- Tmall plans to lower the threshold for opening an online store on the Alibaba-owned business-to-consumer shopping platform by introducing a new trial period for vendors.

Vendors who apply to set up shop from April 19 will face a simplified process, and can become an official merchant after passing a maximum seven-month trial period review, Tmall said in a a statement today.

The move is intended to give merchants more opportunity to demonstrate their business ability and to more fairly and effectively select high-quality vendors to serve consumers, Tmall said.

It is a major change in the rules governing Tmall store openings since the site’s inception in 2009. Unlike Taobao, another Alibaba platform for both individual and business sellers, Tmall is for vendors with a business license who sell branded goods. That requires the businesses to pay higher margin and platform service fees.

Currently, merchants can officially open on Tmall after submitting application materials and passing two rounds of brand and qualification reviews. The new system will only require one review of the trial operation material submitted.

Tmall will pilot the new system first in the four sectors of beauty and makeup, personal care, home cleaning, and maternity and infants. These sectors include beauty and skin care, essential oils, makeup, perfume, children and baby wear, parent-child apparel and other categories.

Since November, Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms have been taking measures to lower merchants’ operating costs in a number of ways. Tmall, for example, allowed them to use the CNY50,000 to CNY150,000 (USD7,633 to USD22,906) in frozen deposits they each made for consumer rights protection and interest for a period of time, if needed.

Taobao has waived this margin, and simplified the procedure to open a store. An online store can be opened with ‘one click’ and the whole process takes just five minutes. Each vendor is also expected to receive a returned deposit of between CNY1,000 and CNY100,000 (USD153 and USD15,270) for store operation.

Editor: Peter Thomas