Alibaba’s annual “Single’s Day” shopping event tops Black Friday sales, in the US by a mile. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving.
Reuters reports Alibaba Singles’ Day Sales Hit $12 billion in First Hour.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Inc said on Monday that sales for its annual Singles’ Day shopping blitz hit 84 billion yuan ($12 billion) within the first hour, up 22% from last year’s early haul of 69 billion yuan.
Akin to Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, Singles’ Day has been promoted as a shopping fest by Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang since 2009, growing rapidly to become the world’s biggest online sales event.
Also known as “Double Eleven”, the festival’s name originates from the calendar date 11/11, with the four ones referencing being single.
Alibaba saw sales worth $30 billion on its platforms on Singles’ Day last year, dwarfing $7.9 billion U.S. online sales for Cyber Monday. Yet the 27% sales growth was the lowest in the event’s 10-year history, spurring a search for fresh ideas.
The $486 billion Chinese retail juggernaut kicked off this year’s 24-hour shopping fest with performances by American pop star Taylor Swift and local celebrities like Jackson Yee.
Lovely.
More people than ever before rush to buy more junk they cannot afford.
Congratulations.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“More people than ever before rush to buy more junk they cannot afford.” Isn’t that the American Way??
Oh thank gowd, the further destruction of the planet continues at full speed ! CHINA : the last nail in the earth s coffin ….. but who actually cares as long as Alibaba, Amazon, Apple and other sick consumerism representing stocks go up… and up…
Yup – the final nail indeed. And KidHorn above says “good news”. No wonder the planet is dying right in front of our faces. And all cheered on by 8 billion hairless monkeys. I’m sad for my young son’s future.
“The Planet” will be just fine. Those hairless monkeys wouldn’t appear quite so hopelessly retarded, if they quit running around believing they were actually significant enough to matter to anyone nor anything but their pathetic little selves.
If there were 8 billion hairless, breeding monkeys, I couldn’t care less. However, I do care about the 0.1% that got the hairless monkeys out of the caves. Sorry about your son.
Socialism American Taxpayers Are Subsidizing Ultra-Cheap Shipping From China
For decades, the U.S. Postal Service has charged some countries less than it charges domestic shippers to move packages within the United States. link to reason.com
The main thing is that purchases bring customers minute (in the worst case) pleasure and profit for sellers. To be honest, which of us would have resisted shopping at big discounts? All we can do is learn to separate the truly necessary from the unnecessary stuff. Articles and essays on link to haveringmotorvations.com about marketing and shopping psychology help me with this, so I just leave it here
There are roughly 330 million US residents (citizens, legal immigrants and illegals combined).
There are roughly 1.25 billion Chinese, about four times as many people.
If one takes the $7.9 billion US cyber monday sales (last year) and multiply by four, it would point to $31.6 billion in Chinese single day sales… versus the $30 billion that Alibaba reported. About expected, maybe a bit under.
Having said that, the US is no longer able to be the global consumer of last resort. Too much debt, and a failed education system (maybe education can be fixed, but its an overpriced mess right now and it takes time to produce better grads).
Its good for the world economy if the consumer base gets diversified away from debtors. Europe also has too much debt; its at the national level instead of consumer level, but the debt is there
Mish,
how about an article on negative bonds? Seems like the tide is turning and yields previously negative are now positive.
That has to mean a big bath for someone. Can you tell us what happens next?
And every CEO in the United States is dreaming of breaking into the market. And willing to do whatever the CCP wants to get a crack at it. Can’t really blame them, if I could get a million people to give me a buck I’d be set for life. If I get a billion or so I could even afford that private jet I dream about…
This is actually good news. The world needs a country outside the US to have trade surpluses with. If China switches to a consumer based economy, it will solve a lot of the worlds economic problems.
You don’t solve economic problems by consuming more, any more than you solve the problem of lack of water by drinking more.
As long as Chinese increased consumption is made up for by increased Chinese production, the aggregate net effect on the outside world is zero.
But if the Chinese are to consume more than they produce, someone else will then necessarily be stuck toiling away for the “pleasure” of keeping an idle Chinese guy lying on a beach all day in splendor. Hardly an economic “benefit” for anyone. Other than the idle Chinese guy on the beach.
We’re gonna’ need a larger landfill :-((
Good to see people spreading the wealth. As for whether or not they can afford, I bet a lot can. As for those buying on credit, someone must think that they are good for it, and creditor and debtor together can clearly afford what they have bought.
“ More people than ever before rush to buy more junk they cannot afford.” I feel some sourness or jealousy in your tone. The chinese consumers have more powers than never before, and those “China crashing” experts are having complex feelings
A $100 purchase adds one-half point to your social credit score.
Consumption is a disease. The world is in the process of unleashing another 1.5B middle class consumers in China and India. The amount of garbage and plastic this will generate is about 5x what the US consumer generates. More consumption isnt the answer to the world’s problems.
If it’s a disease, it’s not a worrisome one since the cure is already in the mail. Major structural problems are already threatening China and India. They’re part of the same banker fiasco as us, they’re horribly polluted, they’re overcrowded yet still have a major demographic crisis (not nearly enough women). They’re also too large and unwieldy resulting in heavy handed crackdowns against ethnic/religious/political minorities. When the West founders, they’ll be right behind us.
Given diminishing marginal return to anything, consumption included, the only logically coherent “answer to the world’s problems”, would then be for Americans, and others who consumer above average, to reduce their consumption sufficiently to make up for the increase coming from other places…… Does that really sound like an “answer” to anything, other than how to be all the AOC groupie one can be?