Alibaba smashes sales records in 24-day shopping festival

The record Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) sales were settled through Alipay on Saturday, an increase of 39 per cent compared with 2016, thanks to the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival 2017, a one-day global online shopping promotion. About 90 per cent of total sales went through mobile platforms.
The festival, launched in Shanghai, started at midnight Chinese time on November 11 (Saturday 11pm, Thailand time) and finished exactly 24 hours later. 
“More than US$25 billion of GMV in one day is not just a sales figure,” said Daniel Zhang, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group. “It represents the aspiration for quality consumption by Chinese consumers and it reflects how merchants and consumers alike have now fully embraced the integration of online and offline retail.”
The ninth annual shopping festival also recorded global sales of more than 10 billion yuan (Bt49.8 bn) in a record-breaking 3 minutes and 1 second period, 91 per cent of it through Alipay, the group’s online payment platform. Zhang said that the GMV settled through Alipay was US$25.3 billion, an increase of 39 per cent over 2016 and total mobile GMV settled through Alipay was about 90 per cent of total GMV, compared with 82 per cent last year.
Alipay processed 1.48 billion total payment transactions, up 41 per cent on last year. The first delivery arrived 12 minutes and 18 seconds after midnight, with more than 60,000 international brands and traders available to Chinese consumers. 
Deals took place in 225 countries and regions, with 167 merchants individually generating more than US$15.1 million in sales. Of these, 17 surpassed US$75.4 million in sales, and six surpassed US$150.9 millions. Top-trading countries included Japan, the United States, Australia, Germany and South Korea.
Alibaba’s online trading exchange processed more than 325,000 orders, 256,000 of these through Alipay, and more than 60 brands each generated more than Bt500 million during its peak phase during the first hour. 
Chris Tung, Alibaba’s chief marketing officer, said the group aimed to build business networks in future, in which customers could meet, work and live at Alibaba. 
Tung said the huge success of the retail festival owed much to behind-the-scenes progress in big data technology, artificial intelligence (AI) technology, facial recognition technology, augmented reality (AR) technology, cashless payments, product information from barcode/QR scans and New Retail platforms. 
The New Retail platform is one of Alibaba’s core strategies and 2017 marks the beginning of a new retail era that enables seamless engagement between online and offline shopping. 
The goal is to improve e-commerce efficiency in these markets and offer better service to global consumers, including the 100 million overseas Chinese. 
Alibaba leveraged its e-commerce platforms to create one seamless experience in which viewers were able to immediately become consumers and buy what they saw regardless of their preferred platform.
“Our goal is not to get into the bricks-and-mortar retail business but rather to help bricks-and-mortar operators restructure and enhance their operations, including customer experience, inventory management and retail spaces, to enable them to succeed in the digital era. This year’s Festival will be the first time that merchants and consumers experience New Retail, Alibaba’s drive to integrate online and offline shopping experiences,” said Tung.
He said that the Global Shopping Festival has evolved from a 24-hour online sale into a 24-day festival that offered consumers promotions and offers from more than 140,000 brands and 15 million products. 
The top-selling international brands were Apple, Estee Lauder, Gap, L’Oreal, Nike, Samsung, Uniqlo and Zara.