Tom Group, which narrowed its net loss last year, has started to ramp up the mobile retail capabilities of its e-commerce venture with China Post after the operation saw sales volume double. Tom’s Chief Executive Ken Yeung said he agreed with Jack Ma, Chairman of Alibaba Group, that e-commerce in China was entering a golden age and that online transactions would make up about 30% of the country’s total retail sales in the next five years. Beijing Ule E-Commerce, which Tom and China Post rolled out in 2010, provides an e-commerce platform that supports online and offline store integration, distribution and logistics, and marketing and promotion to merchants. Unlike Alibaba’s market-leading Taobao online retail operations, which rely on third-party logistics service providers, Ule.com is backed by the resources of China Post. This infrastructure includes 52,000 postal outlets, 150,000 postal delivery workers, 80,000 postal vehicles, 433 train carriages, 16 cargo aircraft and three ships. Ule.com’s gross merchandise value, the total worth of goods sold, reached CNY500 million.