After 24 hours of intense buying and selling, along with weeks of advertising the promote the event, the Chinese market is calming down after another record-breaking Singles’ Day. The Alibaba Group, once more, realised a higher sales turnover than in the previous year.
The Chinese e-commerce platform sold goods worth 268 billion Yuan, $38.4 billion dollars. This is an increase of 26% compared to 2018’s $30.7 billion dollars. The growth rate slowed slightly, however, from the 27% increase last year and 39% in 2017. It is the ‘weakest’ since the event started in 2009. This can be seen as a reflection of how e-commerce sales in China slow down. The main competitor of Alibaba, JD.com, holds an 11-day promotion ending at midnight on November 11th. It reported that it handled sales over that period totalling $29.2 billion dollars, up 30% compared to 2018.
Popular Singles’ Day Goods
Popular goods amongst Chinese e-commerce shoppers were food supplements, facial masks, diapers and baby milk powder. This mainly benefitted brands such as L’Oreal and Nestle, data from Alibaba showed. According to the Chinese e-commerce giant, 299 brands surpassed the 100 million Yuan in gross merchandise value, including Givenchy, Dyson, Philips and Under Armour. Fifteen brands made it over the 1 billion Yuan in sales, including Huawei, Apple, Nike, Xiaomi Corp and Uniqlo.
More than half a billion people from a number of countries participate in the event, which is China’s equivalent to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Singles’ Day, though is much larger. The Chinese e-commerce giant’s annual shopping blitz on Monday brought more than six times the amount of online sales made in the United States on Black Friday last year.
Content sharing
During the Singles’ Day event, there were three key themes that could be identified this year. They are content, innovation and new brands. Looking at content, it turned out to be necessary to live-demonstrate your product through a stream. Brands such as L’Oreal have been live-streaming non-stop for 24 hours. Chinese consumers turned out to be hungry for innovative products and new brands. One million new products were offered and 215 leading international brands such as Lancôme, Givenchy and Shiseido debuted more than 240 special 11.11-themed edition products.