Alibaba buys 9% stake in US retailer Zulily

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has acquired more than 9 percent stake in US online retailer Zulily, according to regulatory papers.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late on Friday, Alibaba said it had bought about 4.8 million Zulily Class A shares at a cost of around US$56 million.

Added to the shares it already owned, Alibaba now has about a sixth of Zulily's Class A stock, representing a 9.3-percent stake in the company, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Zulily's share price closed up 12.67 percent at US$13.30 on Friday.

The Seattle-based retailer primarily sells clothing, toys and other items for kids and is mainly marketed towards mothers. It went public in November 2013 at US$22 a share. Within months, the price had soared to about US$70, but then fell quickly back down again as growth slowed.

Alibaba operates China's most popular online shopping platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90 percent of the country's online market for consumer-to-consumer transactions. It made its debut on Wall Street in September last year, raising US$25.02 billion and breaking the record for the largest initial public offering in history.