24 hours of records (and a vampire) - RMB168.2 billion Singles Day
In the past few weeks, commuters and netizens have been unable to avoid the barrage of 11.11, or Singles Day adverts. Bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday, this year's event reached fever pitch - but without the stampedes in stores.
Alibaba, the inventor of Singles Day, roped in celebrities to help bolster the profile of the event (Nicole Kidman ‘wowed by Alibaba’s Shopping Festival’), which also included Jessie J and Pharrell Williams. The event, which started in 2009 on Taobao and Tmall was originally intended for lonely singletons to buy gifts, helped out with cheaper prices on their two favourite shopping platforms as part of ‘Anti-Valentines’. It's now grown into the biggest sales event of the year, spreading to all the big online retailers and offline stores. Zara (picture below) and Uniqlo were packed, with shelves empty of stock by lunchtime on Saturday in Shanghai. At the end of the event at midnight on Saturday, Alibaba had eventually processed transactions with a GMV of $25.6billion USD.
It was hard not to be caught up in the fervour of it all, with colleagues staying up until midnight on Friday for the best deals. Jack Ma, the enigmatic founder of Alibaba, was part of a lighthearted meme, comparing him to a vampire, sucking the blood (money) of Chinese citizens at midnight with his irresistibly good deals.
The stats on the event are incredible -
- 11.11 is 18 times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.
- 1 billion packages are expected to be delivered in the next few days (with all the returns keeping logistic companies busy for the next couple of weeks)
- 1.5 billions transactions were processed on Alipay - up 41% (the first time I had ever seen the Alipay app slow down was Friday evening)
- Another Alipay stat - Alipay was processing 256,000 transactions per second at its peak (12.05am - 5 minutes after the event officially started) - a new world record.
- Within 7 minutes, Alipay had processed the same number of total transactions as for the whole of 2012.
- 90% of sales were on mobile
How long will it be before 11.11 is a feature in overseas? With Alibaba’s ambitious growth plans - already with a hub in Malaysia and looking at India as a market which may skip traditional retail - it’s only a matter of time before 11.11 could become a global shopping event.
Views are my own and don't reflect the views of my employer.
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