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11/11/2019

Alibaba Singles’ Day Sales Pass $1 Bn In Just In 1 Minute, On Track To Set A Record




Alibaba Singles’ Day Sales Pass $1 Bn In Just In 1 Minute, On Track To Set A Record
The annual Singles’ Day shopping event of Chinese online retailing giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is set to create a new record in its 11th year as the company said that this shopping blitz generated sale revenues of more than $30 billion mark at 4:31 p.m. (0831 GMT), on Monday.
 
The figure quoted by Alibaba in about half of the day of the sale is more than 80 per cent of the last quarter online store sales of the company’s United States based rival Amazon.com Inc and is equivalent to the total sale revenues earned by the company’s all of the e-commerce platforms on Singles’ Day last year.
 
However analysts said that it is likely that growth in sale for the full 24 hour event will be lower than that achieved last year because of a slowdown in the overall e-commerce sale in China and as the overall economic growth of the country is heading to historic lows. 
 
Alibaba also plans to put up for sale to the public about $15 billion worth of shares in Hong Kong this month and this one day event, which is also viewed as a reflection of Chinese consumer sentiment, has therefore assumed great importance for the online retailing giant. The company, which is also listed in the US, has made attempts at diversification but still earns about more than four-fifths of its total revenue from its e-commerce business.
 
It was back in 2009 that the informal Singles’ Day in China was turned into a shopping event by Alibaba which later became one of the biggest online sales fest of the world – easily surpassing the revenues and volume generated during Cyber Monday in the United States which generated revenues of $7.9 billion in 2018.
 
Given the huge success of the event, it has been replicated by online companies in China and abroad. Chinese retailers like JD.com Inc and Pinduoduo Inc have their own singles day like events while South Korea’s 11thStreet and Singapore’s Qoo10 have their own for their countries and regions.
 
But the slowing Chinese economy has also slowed sale growth for Alibaba on Singles’ Day. A 27 per cent year on year sale growth was reported by the company in 2018 which was the lowest growth during the event in the last 10 years. This year, the event will see sale growth of between 20 and 25 per cent according to forecast by Citic Securities.
 
Alibaba said that this year’s Single’s Day event saw sale revenues crossing the $1 billion market after just one minute and eight seconds and touched 158.31 billion yuan ($22.6 billion) within the first nine hours which was 25 per cent more than the same time period a year ago.
 
More than 100 million yuan in sales in the first hour was made each by 84 brands including those of Apple Inc, L’Oreal SA and Fast Retailing Co Ltd’s Uniqlo, the company also said.
 
Alibaba further said that live streaming to sell products during the event was used by over half of merchants on its Tmall marketplace and the sales generated using this medium crossed 10 billion yuan at 8.55 a.m. (0055 GMT).
 
(Source:www.economictimes.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell

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