$ 25 Billion Chinese Shopping Festival Explained – TechCrunch

This Sunday is November. 11, because it celebrates Sing 's Day, the world' s largest online shopping day, with auspicious date in the Chinese technology industry. This year is especially intense because it will be the tenth edition of the annual event (also known as Double Eleven) because it was created by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

Today's single day is a huge business. Alibaba sold more than $ 25 billion last year last year, with 11.11 moving out of China and into other parts of Asia and elsewhere. The company expects to have more than $ 35 billion in trade this Sunday, despite the continuing increase in sales in the previous year, with doubts about the Chinese economy and continued trade battles with the United States.

We are digging into this phenomenon and are well prepared for what to expect this year.

What is this?

The event is similar to Black Friday and Cyber ​​Monday in the United States, but both are 2.5 times the combined date. Alibaba offers a variety of products across the online sales platform, including Taobao Marketplace, Tmall Store for Brands, AliExpress International Services, and more recently Global Business. These include India's Paym, which considers Lazada, Alibaba and Ant Financial as major investors in Southeast Asia.

This sale covers obvious products such as fashion, clothing, furniture and health products as well as smart phones, TV and other large ticket consumer products. Items with a low sales volume include products, toilet paper, and perishable items on a daily basis. Among other things, demand for cars is strong.

Alibaba handled 325,000 orders per second last year with 1.48 billion transactions worldwide. Its Alipay payment service has been revealed 1.5 billion payment transactions reached to total orders 812 million In the meantime, 90% of sales in the United States came from mobile devices, which was 37% higher than Black Friday and 33% higher than cyber Monday.

Alibaba is pursuing its own business and off-line commerce, expanding into physical stores through its Hema brand, and partnerships with major Chinese retailers such as Sun Sun, a hypermarket operator and hypermarket operator Sun Art.

It was changed to "11.11 Global Shopping Festival" in 2015 to reflect Alibaba's efforts to expand sales outside of China's key markets and claimed last year to attract more than 60,000 international brands to customers in over 225 countries.

Initially

November 11 is not synonymous with always purchasing discounted products online. This date is known to have been promoted to a unique celebration day in China in 1990 because the date represents four & # 39; singles. Later I got a new meaning as a day to celebrate my relationship. Popular dates for marriage – find potential partners.

An e-commerce component arrived in 2009 when Daniel Zhang executives used dating to promote Almibaba's virtual mall, Tmall. 27 merchants participate. Zhang, then director of the Tmall business unit, is now the CEO of Alibaba and will assume the role of chairman of Jack Ma – Alibaba for many years and is expected to finish the project next year.

In 2009, Alibaba made about $ 7 million in revenue on its Single Day of Inauguration. In an interview with CNN this week, Zhang said he never expected that this promotion in Alibaba and the broad e-commerce industry would be a huge phenomenon.

Beyond Alibaba

As Singles & # 39; Day took part in the national celebration, other ecommerce companies like JD.com and Pinduoduo joined to take advantage of solid consumer spending for a month. According to market researcher QuestMobile, JD dot.com saw its 21.1% increase in active users in its mobile apps on November 11 last year.

The warm welcome of the event also inspired competition festivals throughout the year. JD.com, which is ranked lower than Alibaba in terms of volume in 2010, launched a mid-shopping event on June 18th, running the Single Day Festival for 12 days. Suning, has turned the anniversary of its main China appliance August 18 into a sales event.

However, none of the late buyers managed to scale to Singles' Day, and Alibaba continues to expand the boundaries of the world's largest shopping event.

Not a number

Single days are getting bigger every year, but sales are slowing down. Total merchandise sales volume declined from 65% in 2014 to 40% in 2017.

But Jack Ma always overlooks the importance of this number. On November 11, 2013, he said he will not investigate sales figures to Chinese media. He repeated a similar message over and over again.

Ma said it is pursuing "steady" growth rather than scale. Because shopping requires the overall infrastructure necessary to perform functions such as logistics and payments.

Ma's words are consistent with the company's ongoing pursuit of potential partners to power their retail ecosystems. Last year, Alibaba poured $ 717 million into Huitongda. Huitongda operates an infrastructure that online retailers can sell to rural customers.

Similarly, Alibaba's financial affiliate, Ant Financial, operates several payment solution companies around the world to support the global support of e-commerce companies, and the cloud computing department handles $ 25 billion in annual commodity sales have. Last year, Cainiao Network, a logistics platform capable of handling 812 million orders placed in China,

Single & # 39; s Day also saw Alibaba adopt a broad range of technology. Last year we visited AR – Maybelline, allowing customers to actually test lipstick. Nike has attracted customers using gamification and Alibaba 's own Tmall service has adopted the Virtual Fitting Room to help sell apparel.

Offline sales

President Alibaba predicted it would become the standard for Singles Day. "We want every e-commerce company involved and every brick and mortar to be part of it," he said.

Ma used the term "new retail" to describe the future of seamless integration between online and offline retail sales in 2016. Last year, an offline push for a shopping festival began. In order to offer discounts to Alibaba customers this year, 200,00 brick-and-mortar stores joined Singles Day. Users can trade offline when using the Alipay e-wallet from Alibaba at the mall. Alibaba uses Alipay to offer prizes through red wallet prizes.

Alibaba said last year that New Retail had "promised" during 11.11, but did not provide any figures. This year, Alibaba's real retail presence will run more than 30 stores and off-line components, including facial recognition-based payments, will become more important than ever. In addition to Hema and InTime physical shopping, it includes Ele.me and Starbucks shipping and the remaining local service delivery platforms.

Expectations for 2018

The single-day outlook for this year's 2018 is challenging because of China's economic struggles and the US heavy industry war with billions of dollars in goods. However, the majority of Alibaba's sales will remain in China in both 11.11 and the rest of the year, so the US government will not feel the move despite progress in international growth.

Nevertheless, there are several key factors:

• Growth slowed: Alibaba's quarterly earnings are sound (40% plus), interest rates themselves slowing, and 11.11
• offline : Alibaba is collaborating on off-line retailing to offset e-commerce saturation with more transactions for people who shop directly.
• service: Reportedly, the $ 30 billion on-demand service and delivery platform will play a more important role in China by providing 11.11 deals
• payment : Alipay is expanding its 11.11 deal by offering discounts to buyers who pay for their apps online or offline.
• More Global: The international footprint of Alibaba continues to increase, in Southeast Asia, we are pushing for 11.11, establishing relationships with Chinese-based sellers, and currently working with Russia and Pakistan / South Asia through dedicated ventures.

Either way, Alibaba has a true spectacle of the world during 11.11.

First, there is a starry entertainment show on the night before the festival begins. Alibaba's Twitter account We will also follow the latest developments on Techcrunch.com for 24 hours to learn more.