The Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba Group Holding Ltd held a single day bonanza and the company has generated a day’s record revenue of 168.2 billion Yuan ($25.3 billion) in sales. This shows that the company’s idea to link their traditional retailers with internet shoppers has so far yielded gain.
The event which happens once a year saw the company record a 39% increase in sales, exceeding the estimate by Citigroup Inc., and even dismissing the economic slowdown that most analysts are concerned about.
The event saw over 82 brands make over 100 million Yuan in sales with top companies like Nike Inc., Xiaomi Corp., and Uniqlo Co topping the sales chart. To make the event livelier and increase the sales, the Chinese e-commerce company decided to host a star-studded gala with celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and American rapper Pharrell Williams gracing the event. The CEO of the company Daniel Zhang stated that the company is looking to make the event more global, with their gala soon to reach other countries, even though he didn’t state when that will be.
This year’s event was productive as customers from over 225 countries were present at the event as they look to take advantage of the discount offered by the company on electronics and mobile devices.
Zhang stated that “We want to make Singles’ Day a more global event. We could take the gala overseas very soon.” From the statistics gathered during the event, it was found that around 90% of the transactions were made using mobile devices, with the company’s processors handling as much as 256,000 transactions per second.
Earlier, Citigroup Inc. estimated that the company’s transaction will rise above 305 due to the event and the company expecting 158 billion Yuan from the sales. That data is rather low as it represents half of what Alibaba made last year, the event still doesn’t catch up with the popular ones such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. At the moment, this event is a personal project of billionaire founder Jack Ma is planning to use it to resurrect the Country’s $4 trillion traditional retail sectors using technology.
The group president of Alibaba Michael Evans commented on their latest retail strategy, “The work that’s been done in the integration of offline and online, not just in terms of the technology integration, but the data and efficiencies for brands and the consumer through personalization has been enormous,” Alibaba President Mike Evans said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. “We see the impact of it in our day-to-day business.”
