Chinese online retailer Alibaba is on the loose, managing to break one of its own records, after on Singles’ Day the managed to sell the same amount of stuff as last year, through its online channels, but in just half the time, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Back in 2014, the profit made on Singles’ Day, a Chinese celebration for people who are single, reached 57.1 billion yuan, which translates to $9 billion, but this years transactions surpassed this value before midday. By 16:30, Beijing time, the sales totaled almost 70 billion yuan, mostly thanks to top selling products, like baby-related items, nutritional products and apparel by Levi’s and Nike.
Aiming to attract more players to their club
“This year’s event is more global with international players joining in. Alibaba aims to both attract more international players selling products to China and the domestic players to expand to the overseas markets,” Fangting Sun, senior research analyst with Euromonitor, said.
Alibaba was somehow expecting this, as they have moved the base from Hangzhou to the former Olympic aquatics center from Beijing, in order to coordinate the operations better. Jack Ma, the company’s chairman, currently tries to reverse the $55 billion plunge in market value and maintain the company’s growth.
Besides this, they’re also planning to increase their influence in China’s northern region, when JD.com Inc, one of Alibaba‘s main competitors, has its headquarters.
A shift on mobile shopping
The company estimates that more than 1,7 million deliverymen, 400,000 vehicles and 200 airplanes will take care of handling packages and make sure they reach their customers on time.
“We’re seeing more and more consumers shifting to mobile,” CEO Daniel Zhang said.“That’s why we’ve prepared special promotion sessions during peak commute hours, so people can shop on their phones.” More than 27 million people bought items from their mobile phones, totaling 72 percent of early sales.
