Over 4000 companies are making a living by managing Taobao/Tmall stores for merchants or providing them with software and/or services, according to Alibaba. Alibaba’s online marketplaces for Chinese retailers saw a 64% increase in the number of third-party service providers and a 72% growth in total merchandise sold through them in 2014. Offerings from third-party services range from store design, store operations, customer relationship management and data analysis to warehousing and logistics. Now it has 1600 employees operating online stores for around 100 brands, including a number of international labels. Since other Chinese online retailers such as JD.com have also established marketplaces, these solution and service providers have added offerings for those platforms too.