Singles’ Day: Alibaba sales hit US$10b in first hour, equalled last year's record by mid-day

A screen shows the value of goods being transacted at Alibaba Group's 11.11 Singles' Day global shopping festival in Shanghai, China, on Nov 11, 2017. PHOTO: REUTERS

SHANGHAI (REUTERS, AFP) - Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba saw its Singles' Day sales surging past last year's total just after midday Saturday (Nov 11), hitting a record US$18 billion (S$24.5 billion), pointing to a likely giant haul for the world's biggest shopping event.

At 6 pm on Saturday, Alibaba said the gross value of sales processed by its online payment system Alipay was nearing US$21 billion - roughly equivalent to the annual economic output of Honduras or Afghanistan. That blew well past the US$17.8 billion logged over the full 24 hours last year, which itself marked a 32 per cent year-on-year increase.

In fact, sales had raced to a billion dollars in just two minutes after the shopping spree opened at midnight.

Alibaba rivals such as JD.com also reported brisk business.

Once a celebration for China's lonely hearts, Singles' Day has become an annual 24-hour extravaganza that exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, and acts as a barometer for China's consumers.

A star-studded event in Shanghai late on Friday (Nov 10) ushered in the event, which is held each year on Nov 11. Five minutes after midnight, Alipay was processing 256,000 payment transactions per second, doubling last year's high-water mark, Alibaba said. The company's tills are set to shut at midnight Saturday.

At just past the halfway mark, the gross merchandise value swept past last year's dollar total of US$17.8 billion. Shortly afterwards, sales surpassed 120.7 billion yuan (S$25 billion), the total in 2016 in the local currency, which has appreciated against the dollar in the past year.

The event gets shoppers around China scouting for bargains and loading up their online shopping carts, while delivery men - and robots - are braced for an estimated 1.5 billion parcels expected over the next six days.

"This is a big event for China, for the Chinese economy," Joseph Tsai, Alibaba's co-founder and vice-chairman, said ahead of the sales bonanza. "On Singles' Day, shopping is a sport, it's entertainment."

Remote video URL

Tsai said rising disposable incomes of China's "over 300 million middle-class consumers" was helping drive the company's online sales - and would continue.

"This powerful group is propelling the consumption of China," he said.

Analysts and investors will closely watch the headline sales number, which looks likely to fly past last year's total.

Spending rose by nearly a third at 2016's sale - the eighth iteration of the event - but that was slower than the 60 per cent increase logged in 2015.

At Alibaba's Friday night gala, the company's co-founder and chairman, Jack Ma, hosted guests including the actress Nicole Kidman, singer Pharrell Williams and Chinese musicians and film stars such as Zhang Ziyi and Fan Bingbing.

SLOWER GROWTH?

The excitement around the shopping blitz, however, masks the challenges facing China's online retailers such as Alibaba and JD.com Inc, which are having to spend more to compete for shoppers in a broader economy where growth is slowing.

"A lot of the lower hanging fruit has been picked and there's increased competition for a share of consumer spending,"said Matthew Crabbe, Asia Pacific research director at Mintel.

He estimated Alibaba's Singles' Day sales growth would likely slow to around 20 per cent.

Online retailers were being forced to push offline as well as overseas to attract new shoppers, and the overall online retail market was close to"saturation".

"They're having to spill over out of the purely online realm into the wider consumer market," Crabbe said.

This has sparked deals to buy bricks-and-mortar stores in China, and overseas tie-ups especially in South-east Asia.

Technology, too, has been key, with virtual reality dressing rooms and live fashion shows to attract shoppers to haute couture.

Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group, noted that brands were being more careful with the deals they have on offer this year to avoid "margins getting killed", and were often asking for deposits in advance. In previous years, most prices were often halved.

"I think prices seem high and I'm totally lost as to the rules" about discounts, said Gao Wantong, 21, a student in Beijing.

Fu Wenyue, a 23-year-old dresser in Shanghai, said she had spent around 4,000 yuan (S$819) on clothes, cosmetics and kitchen utensils in pre-event sales, transactions, ahead of the day which officially only go through once midnight strikes.

"I've bought some stuff already, but I haven't finished shopping yet," she said.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.