Munchkin, based in Van Nuys, CA, is on a mission to be the most loved baby lifestyle brand in the world. For over 25 years they have been creating smart, innovative products ranging from award-winning sippy cups to diaper pails, and now consumables with their popular Milkmakers lactation cookies and teas. Forget about the stress and chaos and enjoy the simplicity and smiles of parenting, because at Munchkin they know that it’s the little things that make the biggest difference. From Munchkin’s heart to yours...

As an established U.S. company, Munchkin traditionally hosted their website in Dallas and relied on a content delivery network to deliver static web content to international regions. With an office in Shanghai and expanding operations in Mainland China, Munchkin also hosted an earlier version of their website in Singapore to serve users in China. However, according to Munchkin’s Senior Director of Digital Technology, Balazs Franciszti, “The company was seeing mixed results with this solution and experiencing low visibility in Mainland China.” To provide a better user experience for customers and to support new product releases, Munchkin wanted to deploy a local online presence in Mainland China. As with many foreign companies operating in China, Munchkin decided to take the path of applying for an ICP Filing and deploying on a local hosting server. "We were evaluating using Akamai to deliver data into China but ultimately decided to physically drop our site into China. To get something up and running efficiently was the main priority,” explains Mr. Franciszti.

Following extensive online research and review of various bulletin boards that repeatedly pointed to Alibaba Cloud’s reputation and strength in the China market, Munchkin decided to contact Alibaba Cloud. Munchkin was impressed by initial contact with the Alibaba Cloud team in the U.S. according to Mr. Franciszti, “Reputation and responsiveness were huge in helping us to make the initial decision to work with Alibaba Cloud, in combination with the help Alibaba Cloud provides around ICP registration.”

Since deploying on Alibaba Cloud, Munchkin have seen major improvements in performance and website availability. “Users can now find Munchkin online in China via our website and that has effectively improved all metrics from zero to one hundred. Before we launched on Alibaba Cloud, our availability in China was only 5 percent according to our internal tests and much of the map was red,” said Mr. Franciszti, adding, “since moving to Alibaba Cloud, the map has changed to green or yellow and the red has completely disappeared.”

With support from Alibaba Cloud, Munchkin successfully obtained an ICP Filing and have deployed on Elastic Compute Service in the China East 2 (Shanghai) region. Munchkin is now exploring other options to scale and expand their online presence in China. This will entail adding new features and products, including Alibaba Cloud CDN. “Although we’ve been using Alibaba Cloud for almost a year now, there is still a LOT to learn and explore, we are starting to put more effort into our China presence, and with that, we are starting to explore all the offerings, including CDN capabilities,” explained Mr. Franciszti.

Mr. Franciszti concluded by saying, “Alibaba Cloud is the best way for a U.S. or an international company to fire up a website in China and get ICP support. Everything became much smoother with our ICP application once we enlisted Alibaba Cloud’s help.”