Six years ago, Alibaba turned 11 November into China’s equivalent of Cyber Monday in the US.
Advertisement
Singles Day is not a traditional Chinese festival, but e-commerce giant Alibaba has been pushing November 11 – a date heavy on ones – since 2009 as it looks to tap the country’s huge, and expanding, army of internet shoppers. “Within the next five years, we expect China will become the world’s largest e-commerce market for imported products”, President Michael Evans told reporters. Just over one third of total sales, around $5 billion, happened in the first 90 minutes of the day and last year’s total of $9.3 billion was surpassed about halfway through the day.
Another statistic: Cainiao Logistics, Alibaba’s partner and affiliate, received 467 million delivery orders on Wednesday, which was up 68 percent from past year.
Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive, said during the event, “This year, Alibaba Group has transformed 11.11 into an unprecedented mobile shopping experience”. He said the day doesn’t just symbolize the future growth of Alibaba (NYSE: BABA), but the potential power of Chinese domestic consumption. “Chinese consumers associate quality and prestige with American and European brands, and both have very solid presence on 11/11 in response to strong consumer demand”.
Total GMV posted an increase of approximately 60% from the same period in 2014, and as a side note, Mobile GMV through Alipay accounted for almost 69% of the total.
Advertisement
Huawei announced that its Honor smartphone brand topped CNY 1 billion (USD 180 million) in sales on the Single’s Day sale in China. Even though the economy is slowing, Alibaba alone sold $14.3 billion worth of merchandise in 24 hours. Alibaba, which operates China’s largest consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, has played a leading role in the Singles’ Day shopping craze but faces increasing competition this year, including from its rival JD.com, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. And I think in the next five years, we may be in Tokyo, we may be in Paris and maybe we are in NY. That seems to be the view in China anyway, as its annual Singles Day bargain bonanza smashes records.
