How CLEANWRAP took a chance on ecommerce and came out on top

CLEANWRAP CO., LTD. was established in 1983 and has grown from a traditional Korean packaging company into an industry leader in the market. We set up factories and laboratories to continue to innovate new methods to create hygienic and premium packaging products at scale. We specialize in food packaging products, as well as kitchen and other household goods. CLEANWRAP holds certifications of compliance to standards for countries all over the globe and has won numerous awards in a wide range of consumer and product segments.

Due to the multiple challenges that struck the market in 2020, we quickly discovered that the traditional ways of handling B2B business were simply not going to work in this rapidly changing environment. We decided that this was the best time to try and expand our business and reach out to a new network of global buyers; Alibaba.com was the obvious choice.

We hadn’t been relying solely on offline business in August 2020 when we joined Alibaba.com; we already had some experience with ecommerce. But we quickly learned that every digital marketplace is different, and it takes time to learn and adapt to the algorithms. To be honest, we had no idea how to operate the Alibaba.com account after we first set up the store, but we weren’t on our own. Alibaba.com Korea's official channel partner, CK Bridge Co., Ltd., provided us with a tailored onboarding service, designing a custom mini-site so that it perfectly suited our company image and brand. They even uploaded the first 60 products we had on our store, which got us up and running right away.

Starting out, we were pretty unsatisfied with the level of traffic and impressions our products were getting; and that was frustrating at first. We constantly exploring and testing new ways to get more exposure for our product selection. By increasing the number of products we listed online and improving the quality of the images and descriptions, we started getting more inquiries. We made sure to respond quickly to every message from the interested buyer and stayed within the system’s recommended response time, and that’s when the account started really getting noticed. So, after the very difficult and confusing months at the start of the pandemic, our company was reborn. We had earned our first star rating in just under six months.

After getting that first star, the average exposure of products in the store jumped significantly, and this convinced us that the strategy we were using was the right way to go. As we entered 2021, we decided to focus on getting a higher star rating, and to accomplish that, we constantly uploaded new products, checked our Star Rating indicators daily, and kept internally discussing new ideas on how to improve that score.

It paid off. We ended up having over 100 products listed on the store and managed to get our second star in a year. Since then, the conversion rate increased to 218%, and the number of inquiries has continued to increase to 366%. Now that things have started going back to like they were before, our traditional revenue streams have returned too. Ultimately, we didn’t have to choose between being an ecommerce company or a traditional, offline company, we could manage both. After joining Alibaba.com, we saw an 18.4% growth in 2020 compared to 2019.

Soon, we could easily understand the different demands that different international buyers had for our products to work for in their markets. We learned a lot in the last 2 years, and CLEANWRAP CO., LTD. will continue to develop packaging products to make sure that they can fulfill market needs anywhere on the planet.

Alibaba.com gives you the opportunity to get your products to the top of their search results rather easily. Just learn to adapt to their system and manage your account well, and you can make it to the top without having to pay for any additional advertising. With the right attitude any company has the ability to get great results even if they pay nothing but the initial setup costs. We certainly did!