SHANGHAI — Singles’ Day, the world’s largest e-commerce event that took place Tuesday, was expected to break records, and the pundits were not disappointed, with e-tailers reporting sales increases across the board.
JD.com, China’s second biggest B2C e-commerce company behind Alibaba, is in a quiet period ahead of announcing earnings so it didn’t break out financial results for Singles’ Day. But it said that over 14 million orders for 35.19 million items were placed on the website over the 24 hour period, an increase of 120 percent on last year.
JD.com estimates that its gross merchandise value was estimated to be more than double 2013’s effort, largely driven by m-commerce and the online retailer’s strategic partnership with Tencent.
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“We saw outstanding sales figures for this year’s Singles Day event, including strong numbers for mobile, which rocketed to over 40 percent of orders placed, as Tencent’s Weixin and Mobile QQ began to drive traffic alongside our popular native app,” said Haoyu Shen, chief executive of JD Mall, which includes JD.com’s online direct sales and marketplace platforms.
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“Our self-operated nationwide logistics network helped drive excellent growth in smaller lower-tier cities during the Singles’ Day event.”
China’s third largest B2C e-commerce operator, Suning, said that by 6pm Tuesday, sales had risen 487 percent over last year, with mobile sales accounting for 38.9 percent of purchases.
Other major Chinese e-commerce retailers, Dang Dang and Yihaodian, which is majority owned by Wal-Mart Stores, also reported major growth in Singles’ Day sales. Dang Dang said it saw an eight-fold increase in orders over last year within the first two hours of the event. Yihaodian boasting six times the sales seen in 2013 over the 24-hour sales period.
Yihaodian also revealed major growth in mobile purchases, which were up nine times, compared with last year.
Purchases on Amazon’s international stores, which were offering fast and affordable shipping to China, as well as a Chinese language service, to celebrate Singles Day, had reached hundreds of thousands of sales by midday on Tuesday, according to Chinese media reports.
On Amazon China, where Singles Day activities have been ongoing for several weeks, sales of international branded goods were up 70 percent over the same period the previous month, the company told local media.
As reported, Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall platforms racked up $9.3 billion in sales over a 24 hour period on Tuesday.
At peak times, 2.85 million transactions were processed per minute by Alibaba’s online payment system, Alipay and the company must now get 278.5 million packages to customers across 217 regions and countries around the world.
Approximately $4 billion, or 42.6 percent of Alipay transactions were completed using a mobile phone, a record for single day m-commerce trade, Alibaba said.
Outside of Mainland China, Hong Kong, Russia, the US, Taiwan and Australia rounded out Alibaba’s top five overseas Singles’ Day markets, the company said.
Local smartphone maker Xiaomi, claimed the title of number one single store performer on Alibaba’s Tmall platform over the course of the day.
In a 24-hour period, Xiaomi reported sales of 1.16 million mobile phone units, valued at 1.56 billion renminbi, or $255 million at current exchange, or about 3 percent of Tmall’s total sales for the day.
Retailers aren’t the only ones happy with Singles’ Day growth. China’s central government also weighed in on the importance of e-commerce to the country’s future.
“The positive development of e-commerce and online shopping, the expand domestic demand and promotion of consumption, is conducive to China’s economic structure adjustment and optimization, and is conducive to the formation of economic growth Its new power, [and the ways in which it can] optimize employment are significant,” China’s Information Technology Development Agency secretary, Xu Yu, told Chinese media.