On November 11th, e-commerce platform, Alibaba holds a shopping festival for 24 hours. Dubbed the 11.11, the shopping fest has already brought in RMB19.1 billion ($3.1 billion), a sum collected at the end of last year’s 11.11 shopping bonanza.
At 1:04pm, Alipay GMV for the 11.11 Shopping Festival hit last year's total of RMB 19.1 billion. What will midnight total? #1111 #Tmall
— Alizila.com (@Alizila) November 11, 2013
Within the first six minutes of the Chinese fete, Alipay recorded transactions worth RMB1 billion ($164m). Half of these transactions were made in the fashion category with RMB6 billion ($1 billion) being recorded in the first hour. Customers enjoy huge discounts on products from over 20,000 merchants including Gap and Uniqlo.
Smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has been receiving a lot of love from customers with sales hitting RMB 100 million ($16.4m) within three minutes. Xiaomi’s sales had reached RMB500 million ($82m) by 1.05pm local Chinese time. Xiaomi’s Mi-3 took the top spot with 11,000 smartphones having sold within two minutes.
Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma notes that the numbers signal the appreciation for e-commerce. The company plans to assess its performance from today’s Shopping Festival to see how its e-commerce platform handles the stress of processing millions of orders over 24 hours.
The Chinese logistics infrastructure lacks facilities that would simplifiy the handling of big sales volume. This includes modernized warehouses, advanced computer systems or a unified licensing regime for the efficient delivery of millions of packages over the country.
Update:
At the end of the shopping festival, Alibaba had recorded transactions worth RMB 35.01 billion ($5.7b). This is 83% up from last years sales with the orders having risen to 171.4 million placed on Alibaba’s Tmall and Taobao platforms.
As of 23:59:59, the final figures for the 11.11 Shopping Festival RMB 35.01 billion (USD 5.7 billion) in Alipay GMV. pic.twitter.com/YRBCJFVYz7
— Alizila.com (@Alizila) November 11, 2013
