Η China's Black Friday, the so-called Singles Day, made its executives Alibaba to celebrate it yesterday but also reassured its investors, as everyone wanted to see if the tariff war between the US. and China would have some impact on consumer spending.
It all started in the 1990s, when male students decided to choose November 11 (11/11) as the day to give themselves a gift, celebrating the fact that… were singles. In 2009 Alibaba in order to promote its new platform Tmall decided for that day of singles to make special offers and generous discounts in all its genres. The idea was so successful that 10 years later, Singles Day is the largest consumer event in China, with the company's sales reaching $ 30,8 billion this year, well above the $ 25,3 billion in 2017, which was and then a record sales.
Last year's record was broken at 17:34 on Sunday afternoon, with sales continuing unabated until the end of the day, reaching a 27% increase on an annual basis (based on the yuan). Even though this sounds (and is) an impressive growth rate, it is still lower than the + 39% on an annual basis recorded by the group's total sales in 2018. The fall of the yuan against the dollar, as a result of the trade war between the USA and China, kept sales lower than normal, as they need more yuan to reach the same sales in dollars. In this light, Alibaba sales are even more impressive than the final figure shows.
Indicatively, Alibaba's sales on Singles Day alone are higher than the total sales of all US stores for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, together. Because the good day for Alibaba seemed from the morning, from the opening of the platform until the first billion dollars entered the company's coffers, it took just 1 minute and 25 seconds. Just over an hour and sales surpassed $ 10 billion, five minutes and 21 seconds faster than last year. The number of delivery orders exceeded one billion.
Alibaba hosted a gala with celebrities such as Miranda Kerr and Mariah Carey, which started on Saturday and lasted until the end of the event.
The Chinese electronics giant is focusing heavily this year on removing the stamp of exclusively e-commerce and is focusing on a strategy called "new retail", which aims to consolidate its online business divisions with offline. For example, it has a chain of grocery stores called Hema that allows users to enter the store, shop, pay with their phone and leave. The recent agreement with Starbucks is part of this new strategy.
«When we talk about "New Retail" we firmly believe that online stores and those that exist in the physical world, should not be two different worldsSaid the CEO of Alibaba, Daniel Zhang. "If you look around, everyone lives on the internet and they should have the same business world in front of them. We need to innovate and offer the same complete experience both online and offline«.
As for the choices of Chinese consumers Razer, Apple,, Xiaomi, Dyson seems to be yesterday's winners while N.A. had a large contribution to sales as a whole. Asia.
Alibaba's competitor, JD.com is estimated to have reached $ 21 billion during the two weeks of relevant campaigns for Singles Day, while the total turnover of the season in China is estimated to have reached 55 - 60 billion dollars! At this level are the GDP of Bulgaria and Uruguay…
