Taobao products are now being sold directly to bargain-hunting shoppers in Singapore.

Alibaba Group Holding and Lazada Group have teamed up, after the former made a US$1 billion (S$1.4 billion) deal for control of the latter in 2016.

This gives the Chinese retailer access to Southeast Asia, beating Amazon to the game.

taobao.lazada.sg is the first partnership between Alibaba and Lazada.

What's great?

Besides no longer having to deal with a language barrier as taobao.lazada.sg is translated into English, there is a flat delivery fee of S$2.99.

Some 400,000 products have currently been made available. These items have been curated from top-selling products and customer reviews.

Shoppers also no longer have to worry about shipping, payment methods and returns.

Who will be facing difficulties?

Namely EZBuy and Qoo10.

EZBuy is a third-party agent, helpfully getting products to Singaporeans from Taobao. Shoppers will rely less on them as Taobao Lazada will effectively bypass the agent.

EZBuy shipping methods can be varied and there are two-time payments.

Returning items can also be a chore as they are bought via the agent.

The agent fee is also not reflected at the point of purchase.

With Taobao Lazada's entry, Qoo10 will face straight-up competition even though they already have 2.5 million registered users in Singapore.

American online retail giant Amazon were supposed to enter the Singapore market in early 2017, but plans have been pushed back to the later part of the year.

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