The Singles’ Day sale is the world’s largest shopping festival and according to Alibaba’s data, Chinese shoppers stocked up on facial masks, baby milk powder and food supplements. Amongst the biggest winners were names like Nestle and L’Oreal. The annual shopping blitz held by the Chinese ecommerce giant started on Monday and raked in a record sales worth 268.4 billion Yuan, which is $38.38 billion. This is almost six times the amount of sales that were made last year in the United States on Black Friday. The shopping bonanza on Singles’ Day was kicked off by Alibaba with a live performance by Taylor Swift and over 1,000 brands were also marketed via live streaming.
On Tuesday, Alibaba disclosed that in terms of gross merchandise value, almost 299 brands had exceeded 100 million yuan. This included home appliance manufacturers Philips and Dyson, LVMH’s Givenchy and sportswear maker Under Armour. As per the Chinese behemoth, 15 brands raked in sales of more than 1 billion yuan. These included Xiaomi Corp, Apple, Nike, Huawei Technologies and Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo. The most popular import product was food supplements whereas products, such as face wash, diapers and makeup also enjoyed strong sales.
As far as overall growth in sales for the annual shopping festival is concerned, it reduced to 26% this year, which is the lowest recorded since the festival was introduced in 2009. It is an indicator of how there has been a slowdown in ecommerce sales in China. However, analysts stated that the growth rate actually managed to beat their expectations. According to them, increased focus on attracting more customers from rural areas, more aggressive promotions and even the overall slowing economy in the country may have prompted more people to purchase products at reduced and discounted rates. Most analysts had predicted an increase between 23 percent and 25 percent.
They said that consumers had probably waited for Singles’ Day for making their medium-sized purchases in order to save some money as they seemed to be a bit more careful about what they bought this time around. The sales data showed that there were more medium-sized purchases, as opposed to small ones and some products were top favorites. This could be the reason behind the higher than expected increase in sales growth for the event, as compared to last year. This event has been widely publicized due to is impressive results and so, it has been replicated within the country and abroad as well. Even Alibaba’s rivals in the country had their own similar campaigns for Singles’ Day, such as JD.com.
They had introduced their campaign from November 1st and said that during the eleven days, their transaction volume had surpassed a value of 204.4 billion yuan. Fast Retailing, owner of Uniqlo, stated that their physical stores saw an increase in the number of visits. The company has almost 700 stores in China. It also disclosed that its most items during the same had been their Ultra Light Down Jackets and Heattech thermal underwear.
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