Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival (Singles’ Day) kicked off early this year, as the event features two sales periods for the first time. The first round of sales was held on November 1–3, following a pre-sale on October 21–31. During the pre-sale, consumers could put down deposits toward purchases and then pay off the rest of the amount once the official sale began to receive their orders. In the first hour of pre-sale (on October 21), the number of consumers that shopped on Alibaba’s platform more than doubled compared to the same period last year. In addition, more than 300 brands reported that their first-hour pre-sale GMV surpassed that of the full first pre-sale day in 2019. An early read of the event shows that Double 11 sales started strongly, reflecting a solid rebound of Chinese spending power following the Covid-19 crisis. Beauty and Electronics See Sales Boom This year, over 14 million products will be on sale on Alibaba’s Tmall e-commerce platform during the Singles’ Day shopping festival—40% more than the 2019 iteration of the event. According to Alibaba, 100 brands hit GMV of ¥100 million ($15 million) on Tmall within 111 minutes of the official launch of the first sales period, at 12:00am on November 1. These brands include Adidas, which achieved the milestone in the first 60 seconds, Apple, Barabara, Estée Lauder, Haier, Huawei, Lancôme, L’Oréal, Lin Wood, Midea, NIKE, Perfect Diary, Quanyou Home, Xiaomi and more. Beauty and electronics products were two of the most popular categories—seven of the 10 bestselling products in the first hour were beauty or beauty devices. The GMV of 16 electronics brands exceeded ¥100 million ($15 million) in the first hour. During the pre-sale period, these two categories also contributed almost 70% of total generated GMV (see Figure 2). [caption id="attachment_118792" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Source: Alibaba[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_118793" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Pre-sale period ran from October 21 to 31, 2020.
GMV generated during pre-sale period represents final sale price, not the amount of deposit paid by consumers.
Source: ECDataway [/caption]   Livestreaming and Entertainment Livestreaming has gained huge traction in the past year and continues to be one of the most popular and effective channels to engage with consumers and boost sales. Within just 10 minutes on the first day of pre-sale (October 21), GMV on Taobao Live exceeded the total GMV from the entire first day of pre-sale in 2019. This year, the Double 11 event includes two galas: the new Livestreaming Gala, which was held on October 31; and the traditional Countdown Gala, which is set to take place on November 10. The Livestreaming Gala was broadcasted through Hunan TV, Taobao and other video-streaming platforms. It involved the participation of 70 celebrities and 17 Taobao Live studios, with a performance on the main stage surrounded by livestreaming studios. The show and livestreaming session were shown to viewers alternately. During the gala, the livestreaming studio sessions attracted 200 million views in total. Three of the 17 hosts generated GMV above ¥100 million ($15 million). Top hosts Viya and Austin Li (Li Jiaqi) achieved GMV of ¥430 million ($63 million) and ¥306 million ($45 million), respectively, on the evening of October 31. [caption id="attachment_118794" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Source: Alibaba[/caption]   Package Delivery Is Faster than Ever The delivery speed of orders broke a record this year: One shopper in Hangzhou received their package in five minutes after he paid off the balance of a pre-sale product at 12:30am on November 1. As of 6:00pm on November 1, 337 cities nationwide have received some Singles’ Day packages. In addition to upgraded logistics infrastructure and increased labor, the rapid delivery this year is a result of Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao’s new initiative called “pre-sale ultra-fast delivery”. Based on pre-sale data, Cainiao sent items to its Cainiao Post stations or partnered locations near consumers in advance, so shoppers could have their orders delivered as soon as possible once they had paid in full for their purchase.