An arm of Taiwanese produce trader Kingo Fruits has partnered with an Alibaba-owned e-commerce platform to sell Washington State-grown cherries on the Chinese mainland, branded under the company's own 'Sunshine Fresh Fruit' line.

In a campaign that started on July 4 and finishes today (July 9), pre-sales of 3,000 cherry servings were set to take place on Tmall.com's 'Miao xian sheng' platform, which means 'Mr. Miao' and is a wordplay on 'freshness' in Mandarin.

The campaign bore the title 'Coming of the king' in reference to the cherries' super sizing with 32mm width, also known as 8.5 row.

"All these cherries were picked by our staff team led by our Sunshine Fruit project manager; these delicious fruit aren't even available to locals in the U.S.," says Shanghai Kingo Fruits Co. Ltd. manager Zheng Jiaqi .

"Global sourcing capability is among our strengths, and that's how we found so many large cherries in Washington State."

At the moment, four of Kingo's staff members are operating as product inspectors in the U.S. state, while the first batch of cherries prepared for the campaign arrived in Shanghai by airfreight on July 3.

The campaign's webpage shows these large cherries are sold at CNY99 (US$16) per kg (2.2lbs) package, which is less than a third of the market price. Zheng said part of the cost-cutting effort comes from the support of China Eastern Airlines for providing a chartered flight service direct to Shanghai.

Major produce exporters such as Chelan Fresh, Sage Fruit and Jackass Mountain Ranch also offered support for the project, with Sage's Peter Verbrugge - the only U.S. cherry farmer who rang Alibaba's IPO opening bell - appearing in a promotional video as a special guest.

"These beautiful cherries were harvested from our orchard yesterday, packed fresh this morning and they could be delivered to your door in 48 hours," Verbrugge says in the video.

"With two direct flights per week into China, and high quality packaging, you can enjoy an experience that you've never had before."

Kingo's e-commerce brand Sunshine Fruit was launched on Miao xian sheng in February.

"I guess you can call us a trailblazer among importers, since we import and sell the fruit online all by ourselves," Jiang said.

"Now we already have an competitive edge thanks to out strong global sourcing and independent inspection capabilities, which allowed us to cut down many additional transnational costs."

Zheng said Kingo could further expand sales through its e-commerce brand by improving its supply chain management, even though the experienced importer has been a major supplier to retailer for many years.

"It's not only about simple fruit retailing. The main reason we're doing this is that we want to cut down on all the intermediary transaction costs. It's good for the producers, as they now have a safer distribution channel for their fruit.

"For us, it's easier to find out what our end-customers really like and expand our distribution network this way.

"Bringing the first-hand fresh fruit to our customers while improving the cost-efficiency of our business, I don't see why we shouldn't do it."

The executive added Kingo planned to build on the super-sized cherry initiative with the launch of a series of innovative pre-sales campaigns.

Headquartered in Taiwan and founded in 1986, Kingo first set up in mainland China in 2001 with an office in Guangzhou, and has since expanded to Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Chile.

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