China’s largest Internet retailer sales reached $14.3 billion on the country’s biggest online shopping holiday, smashing last year’s figure to set a new record for a single day of sales.
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“Singles Day’s” sales return is 700% larger in comparison to last year’s $2 billion desktop online spending on “Cyber Monday” in the USA, according to internet analytics firm comScore.
Alibaba started Singles Day on November 11, 2009. The idea behind this anti-valentine event is that if you’re single, you’ll likely have no commitments (in terms of a partner or kids) and therefore should celebrate the single life by, amongst other things, buying stuff you want. The response to China’s Singles Day shopping bonanza mirrors the show and energy of China’s industrialist occasion.
“We obviously hope to do better than a year ago in terms of total transactional volume”, Alibaba Vice Chairman Joe Tsai told GeekWire on Tuesday.
Last year, it took 38 minutes to hit the 10 billion yuan mark and the company is expected to easily break last year’s one-day sales record of 57.1 billion yuan (USD 10 billion).
Suning Commerce Group, an online-to-offline retailing company with headquarters in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, also said its number of orders tripled on Singles Day.
Within the first hour, it had made $3.9bn (£2.bn) in sales, nearly double the amount spent in the same time period of the event past year. Numerous shoppers are aware the Chinese economy is pivoting, but it is very common for individuals to spare cash on singles day. “The whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption this November 11”, said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive officer. GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced in the country.
To improve logistics capacity, Alibaba plans to deploy 1.7 million delivery employees, 5,000 warehouses, 400,000 vehicles and 200 airplanes. Over the course of the 24-hour shopping marathon, consumers will have a new surprise every hour that has been especially tailored for mobile users. 27 million more purchases came through cell phones in first hour.
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The event has received vocal support from the government at a time when China’s economic expansion is slowing and Beijing is trying to transform its growth model into a more sustainable one driven by consumption.
