1688 Jack Ma founded the 1688 website in 1999, which is the predecessor of Alibaba.

1688 is now the flagship business of Alibaba Group and is China's leading domestic trade e-commerce platform for small enterprises. As a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, 1688 represents the interests of enterprises in the CBBS e-commerce system, provides business opportunity information and convenient and secure online transactions for tens of millions of buyers and suppliers around the world, and is also a community for merchants to make friends and interact with each other in real life.

1688 focuses on wholesale and procurement business, improves customer experience through professional operation, and comprehensively optimizes the business model of enterprise e-commerce.

1688 has covered 16 major industries such as raw materials, industrial products, clothing and accessories, home furnishings, small commodities, etc., and provides a series of supply services from raw material procurement-production and processing-spot wholesale.

On April 12, 2018, Alibaba 1688 held a summit in Guangzhou. The first anniversary of the launch of the Alibaba 1688 cross-border dedicated market platform, the report card was disclosed to the public for the first time: as of the end of March, nearly 500,000 small and medium-sized enterprises have provided services to platforms such as AliExpress, Amazon, Wish, eBay, Lazada, etc. through the 1688 cross-border platform, covering 220 countries and regions around the world; within a year, the transaction volume and buyers of the cross-border dedicated market have increased by more than 4 times.