Alibaba Breaks the Sales Record on November 11

Chinese web-giant Alibaba group set a new Singles Day sales record. Over the past years, the Group trading platforms, such as Taobao, Tmall, Aliexpress and others have been traditionally holding sales on November 11. This year, following the 24-hour campaign sold merchandise value amounted 268 billion yuan ($38.3 billion), a 26% increase over the last year record.

Alibaba platforms’ purchase amount reached 114 billion yuan ($16.3 billion) in less than 90 minutes from the sale start, that is more than half of the sales value for the whole day the year before.

Alibaba’s main competitor – Jd.com – reports its own record. This year, November 11 sales value amounted 204.4 billion yuan ($29.2 billion).

This year shows a record increase in premium electronics sales amounts. For example, the amount of sold TVs larger than 70 inches increased by 400%. 5G smartphones, robotic vacuum cleaners and other smart appliances were in strong demand as well. During the first 10 minutes of sales, the official Apple store at Tmall achieved a 7-fold increase in sales value as compared to 11 November 2018.

Foreign buyers on Aliexpress, Lazada and other platforms make a strong contribution to the record sales values. АТС group of companies is Alibaba Group logistics provider and ensures the transportation of the major part of shipments from China to Russia. Commentary by the Director of Operations of АТС China Pavel Avramenko:

We perform long haul of packages from Alibaba sites both via mail and express channels. We traditionally experience some pressure following the sale on November 11, as the amount of shipments increases dramatically. In this regard we have to concentrate all the efforts and arrange our teamwork. This year, in ATC we focus on express shipments delivery time. We aim to reduce the period of time between the acceptance of a package in a warehouse in China and its arrival to Moscow to 48 hours. This in conjunction with the arranged work of the first and last mile operators will allow us to transmit an order from its purchase on the site to receipt by the buyer in Russia within 10 days. We plan to keep this standard for transporting November amounts generated by the November 11 sale.