Billions in minutes on China Single鈥檚 Day
Print Edition
More than 100 cargo planes and countless high-speed railway cars and vehicles are gearing up to shuttle around Chinese cities after the shopping carnival that is Single’s Day.
Today’s online shopping spree, which began as a celebration for single people, has become the country’s most popular annual commercial holiday and an e-commerce phenomenon.
However, what most concerns Chinese e-commerce enterprises is not the sales volume, but the herculean task of actually delivering the goods.
In some major cities, express companies are sorely lacking manpower after many staff are reported to have quit, preferring not to face the massive flood of goods the day entails.
Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba Group, operator of Taobao.com and Tmall.com, said: “It is destined to be a nationwide online retail frenzy. Chinese customers have no lack of spending power, but just need an ignitor.”
Zhang added: “Single’s Day releases both customers’ desire and the sales channels. Alibaba provides the kindling in igniting the mass effect and appeal of e-commerce.”
Snowballing sales
Single’s Day turned into 24 hours of crazy online shopping when Alibaba launched its first sales campaign on November 11, 2009.
Since then, Single’s Day sales at Tmall have snowballed from 50 million yuan (US$8.2 million) in 2009 to 19.1 billion in 2012, and are expected to top 30 billion this year.
In the first 63 minutes of today’s spree, which began at midnight, orders had already reached 7 billion yuan.
Last year, some 10 million online shoppers logged on to Alibaba in the first minute.
Last week, Alibaba opened its Single’s Day “overseas fairs” to allow overseas customers to take part. Customers living outside the Chinese mainland can access versions of Alibaba’s content in both traditional Chinese characters and English.
“It is so warming to see pages in traditional Cantonese on this year’s online fair for Hong Kong residents,” said Shi, an online customer in Hong Kong.
Other major e-commerce firms are keen to get their share of the Single’s Day pie.
A full month ahead of Single’s Day, advertising campaigns were launched by Jingdong and Suning, among others.
Major economic force
The Chinese government is reported to be delighted with the efforts of e-commerce companies in unleashing a major force in the national economy.
At a recent meeting, Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder, told Premier Li Keqiang Taobao had made November 11 “Chinese customer day.” Li replied: “You have created a time-point of consumption.”
The leadership is striving to steer the country’s economy with a slower, more sustainable growth model based on domestic consumption instead of investment and exports. Online shopping is making a contribution to that effort.
During times of global economic downturn, the government would rather encourage domestic consumption than release a stimulus package, indicating tolerance for slower growth during the reform process, said Xu Shaoshi, minister in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission.
China had 564 million Internet users at the end of last year and online retail sales totaled 1.3 trillion yuan in 2012, according to the China e-Business Research Center.
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