The joint venture features AliExpress, Mail.ru Group, MegaFon Russian Direct Investment Fund
The operation to establish a joint venture in Russia signed Alibaba Group – which will bring together e-commerce platforms, social media and popular games for the benefit of the country’s consumers and will offer Russian small and medium-sized enterprises greater access both locally and locally international markets – it’s a done deal.
First announced in September 2018, the joint venture features AliExpress, the leading Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group, the Russian mobile telecommunications operator MegaFon and the sovereign wealth fund Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF).
After the federal anti-monopoly service of Russia authorized the JV to move forward last June, now AliExpress Russia JV is owned by the majority of Russian shareholders, with a board of directors composed of RDIF executives, Alibaba Group, MegaFon and Mail.ru Group. Group CEO Mail.ru Boris Dobrodeev is the chairman of the board, while AliExpress Russia’s chief Liu Wei and the first deputy general manager of the group Mail.ru Dmitry Sergeev will serve as co-CEO of the JV.
Alibaba remains focused on fulfilling its basic mission
“Alibaba remains focused on fulfilling the mission ‘to make it easy to do business anywhere.’ “AliExpress Russia JV is an important part of Alibaba’s globalization strategy and a key step towards our long-term goal to help 10 million small businesses achieve profitability and serve 2 billion customers worldwide,” he said. Daniel Zhang, Executive Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group.
“Together with Mail.ru Group, RDIF and MegaFon, we are committed to accelerating the development of the digital economy of consumers in Russia and the CIS countries, allowing regional brands and SMEs to reach and serve their target consumers through our unique and innovative shopping experience, “said Zhang.
The JV group and Mail.ru will conclude a strategic cooperation agreement related, among other things, to traffic and product initiatives. The JV will also promote its services on the Mail.ru Group platforms through exclusive solutions for product integration and marketing.
Mail.Ru Group has 100 million Internet users
Mail.Ru Group has 100 million Internet users through its social media properties, messaging, e-mail and online games, with 90% of all Internet users in Russia using at least one of its properties every month. The two largest Russian social media sites of Russia VKontakte and Odnoklassniki and its main email service are all owned by the Mail.ru Group.
In addition to combining social media and e-commerce, the joint venture will work to support the upgrade of consumption in Russia by offering a greater selection of high-quality products on the market. For Russian small and medium-sized enterprises it is an opportunity to tap into a new connected ecosystem in the domestic market, accessing over 600 million consumers using Alibaba platforms, including China, Southeast Asia, Turkey, Europe and India.
The joint venture also plans to participate in the acceleration of the Russian digital economy, exploiting the respective strengths of the parties in electronic commerce, social and digital media, logistics and the local market and helping to build the future commercial infrastructure in Russia and in the world.
JD will work with Camus to launch exclusive products based on the opinions of Chinese consumers
Camus Cognac, the world’s largest family-owned independent cognac home, has announced an expansion of its partnership with JD.com, the largest Chinese retailer. As part of the extended partnership, in addition to offering several Camus premium brands to consumers, JD will work with the parent company to launch exclusive products, based on consumer opinions about Chinese market trends. Taking advantage of its various offline resources, JD will help Camus develop innovative marketing programs; a project in line with JD’s “Boundaryless Retail” strategy.
JD’s analysis of Chinese imported liquor consumers has found that many of them belong to a wealthy age group, aged between 26 and 35, curious to try new products. Based on this, Camus Cognac recently launched a Cognop VSOP gift pack on JD. The product has rich flavours and is ideal for young consumers interested in exploring new spirits.
The new partnership enthused both parties at stake
Cyril Camus, fifth-generation owner and president of Camus Cognac, said: “We are excited to grow our partnership and collaboration with JD.com. While Chinese consumers of wine and spirits continue to mature in refinement, I am confident that this partnership represents the perfect combination, mixing the incessant drive of Camus Cognac for JD’s utmost refinement and dedication to an impeccable omnichannel shopping experience “.
“We are excited to expand our strategic partnership with Camus Cognac,” said Carol Fung, president of JD FMCG. “We look forward to leveraging JD’s capabilities in customer analysis, marketing solutions and technology to increase the recognition of the Camus brand among Chinese consumers who are passionate about high-quality liquor.”
The number of imported spirits consumed in China will grow by 20% in four years
The extended partnership comes as demand for high-quality spirits in China continues to grow. According to industry estimates, the number of imported spirits consumed in China should grow by 20% within four years, from a total of 4.4 million boxes in 2018 to 5.3 million boxes in 2022.
In 2018, as a testament to the importance of the market, China surpassed Singapore for the first time, becoming the world’s second-largest cognac buyer after the United States, with over 255 million bottles consumed.
The FILA brand is owned by Anta, the largest Chinese sportswear manufacturer, which took over the Italian business in 2009
If we talk about sportswear, it is impossible not to mention the renowned Italian brand FILA, which has been producing sportswear for over a hundred years. The Italian company, which in 2009 was taken over by Anta, the largest Chinese manufacturer of sportswear, said it will try to extend its reach to various age groups in China, focusing on high fashion and performance sports.
In particular, Brian Yiu, CEO of FILA China, said that the brand will continue to be a fundamental element for the Anta Group, although its earnings could still be lower than the Anta brand, due to the slower opening of stores in the second half of the year due to a modified macroeconomic environment.
Anta said that FILA accounted for 40 percent of its total revenue during the first six months of this year and that FILA’s revenue increased 79.9 percent to 6.54 billion yuan ($ 921 million) in the same period.
FILA is present in New York, Milan, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo.
With the intention of expanding the brand, FILA intends to use the four sub-brands under it, which are the main FILA Core brand, FILA Kids for children’s sportswear, FILA Fusion mainly for young consumers and FILA Athletics for sports shows.
In particular, FILA Core, which caters to consumers aged 25 to 45, is a leading brand that combines elements of fashion and sport and has collaborations with renowned fashion designers including Fendi, Jason Wu and 3.1 Phillip Lim.
Brian Yiu added: “It is essential to find an adequate way to communicate with the new generation, both as a company and as a parent. It is also one of the reasons why we founded FILA Fusion, so that we can communicate directly with younger consumers. ”
FILA is trying to win over middle-high income consumers
However, if on the one hand there is the importance of fashion, on the other the sporting performance is fundamental. Last year, FILA established the FILA Athletics brand, which deals with tennis, golf, running equipment, fitness and seasonal sports including skiing, cycling and water sports.
“We are seeing a growing number of Chinese taking part in high-level sporting activities such as tennis and sailing, as well as seasonal sports such as skiing and cycling,” said Yiu.
Adam Zhang, the founder of the Key-Solution sports consulting and marketing agency, said: “In order to maintain such a high rate of growth, FILA must listen carefully to consumer preferences and continue to invest in its categories of fashion sports to improve its advantage in fashion and to gain new strength from sports performance “.
E-commerce is playing a big role in the transformation of Africa into a digital society, thanks mainly to Chinese companies that are not only stimulating the competition but that are also fostering the digital scene
The old narrative of Africa on the margins is fading fast. Here, the People’s Republic, whose digital economy has experienced massive growth over the last decade, stands as a model for the continent, which is quickly moving towards e-commerce showing promising results.
Indeed, internet and e-commerce are playing a big role in leading Africa’s transformation into a digital society, thanks mainly to Chinese tech companies that are not only stimulating the competition but that are also fostering the digital scene.
One of them is Kilimall that was founded by an ex-Huawei employer from China in 2014. Named after Africa’s highest mountain Kilimanjaro, Kilimall was the first Chinese e-commerce company to enter Africa and it is now one of the continent’s biggest e-commerce platforms.
In 2012, the founder and chief executive of Kilimall, Yang Tao, was sent to Africa to help local telecoms companies build mobile payment platforms. After spending some time there, he became aware of the inconvenience of shopping in African countries because of the lack of balance between price and availability. “The price of goods was very high in Africa while choices were limited,” Yang said.
Therefore, as African middle-class was booming, Yang Tao saw in the e-commerce sector an answer to the emerging demands of a brand-new society, whose quality of life was getting quickly higher.
In 2014, he thus launched Kilimall, an e-commerce platform selling different kind of products, including electronics, clothing, home appliances, and make-up. In 2015, the company also allowed thousands of Chinese suppliers to sell in the platform and they now make up half of the sellers on the marketplace.
Today, Kilimall has about 10 million users and over 10,000 sellers from both Africa and China. Moreover, inspired by the Chinese experience, the African marketplace also provides its own online payment system, Lipapay, and logistics structure, KillExpress.
“No one could ignore the trends, and we should leverage digitalization to realize the new possibility for Africa and China. E-commerce is a new option to accelerate economic growth and create employment,” Yang said.
Although African consumer habits are completely different from the Chinese ones, Kilimall’s Chinese roots have certainly played an important role in terms of the experience of operations and marketing techniques, which made it stand among local competitors.
One of them is the Nigerian Jumia, the largest e-commerce operator in Africa. Not only Jumia operates in 23 different countries but it also owns 48% of the continent’s market. Moreover, this platform was able to jump from 2.7 million users in 2017 to over 4 million users the next year.
Headquartered in Lagos in Nigeria, Jumia was founded in 2012 by two ex-McKinsey consultants, Sacha Poignonnec and Jeremy Hodara, together with Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Kofi Afaedor. It is the first African technology company listed on the US stock exchange.
Despite it is an African company, Jumia did not escape the Chinese influence. Indeed, just like the Chinese platforms, the African marketplace also provides a variety of services such as food delivery and travel booking. Made of nine portals in 23 countries, Jumia serves every possible need, from the classic e-commerce to travel, from food to taxis, from job offers to the sale of houses. It is called the “African Amazon” but it actually represents the sum of eBay, Booking, Uber, and Uber Eats, looking more like Alibaba than Amazon.
Cases like Kilimall and Jumia perfectly represent Africa’s recent digital growth. According to the research site Statista, the digital industry was worth $16.5 billion in 2017 and it is now expected to hit $29 billion by 2022 while necessary infrastructure, such as mobile phone ownership, and household incomes continue to rise.
Moreover, with the surge of internet penetration on the continent, many Africans are easing into the habit of shopping online. According to McKinsey’s report, today, e-commerce in Africa represents 2-3% of total purchases, but it could account for up to 10% of retails sales with a value of around $75 billion by 2025, as more Africans gain access to the internet.
Although the e-commerce sector is still far from Africa’s largest earner, the market is growing, and it is growing fast. The potential is, therefore, huge. Especially taking into account that here the use of the smartphone has grown by 70% only between 2017 and 2018, creating a potential base of 660 million internet users.
Therefore, if in a metropolis like Lagos, where shopping centers are few, buying on the internet is just more convenient, in peripheral centers and villages, where many products do not even arrive, it is a necessity. “We’re making people’s lives better,” says Ms. Poignonnec. “But the path is long. Even for the upper-middle-class e-commerce remains a novelty,” she adds. But China is doing more, it is exporting an e-commerce culture followed by its idea of “cashless” society. And consumers seem to appreciate the change.
Africa’s e-commerce market will amount to $18 billion in 2019 and reach $32 billion by 2023, with an annual growth rate of 15.4%, according to market and consumer data provider Statista.
Once again, behind this fast digitalization, there is Beijing, which has found in Africa a relatively young market with huge potential. China has indeed spent the past decade building the region’s digital infrastructure, allocating billions of dollars in the continent and becoming the largest trading partner of Africa as a whole.
Actually, Beijing sees in Africa a friend among developing countries. The African market is so much similar to China’s one before its explosive economic boom that at the closing of the summit of the China-Africa Forum for Cooperation held in Beijing in 2018, Chinese President Xi Jinping said China shares with Africa a common future to pursue through a “joint march”. In this framework, Chinese enterprises are serving as a bridge for closer cooperation.
Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE effectively helped to develop the continent’s mobile network, leading the growth of mobile phone and internet penetration. These early investments contributed to the explosion in mobile telephony and to the birth of e-commerce in many African countries.
But China’s intervention in Africa did not come out of the blue. In order to pursue the realization of its massive initiative of a renewed digital Silk Road, African technological development is necessary. The Belt and Road Initiative here is, therefore, integrated into the region’s agenda, which has the goal to link the 54 countries in an area of free trade and free movement of goods and people together with a shared peace on the entire continent.
In the past, structural limitations and immature markets have deterred global players from establishing roots in Africa. But homegrown e-commerce platforms such as Kilimall or Jumia reflect the appetite both among customers and local entrepreneurs for a digital transformation. From one of the poorest countries in the world, China now sits at the big table. It thus has both the knowledge and the will to drive Africa through this transformation.
Referring to the Celestial Empire, Dylan Piatti, chairman of E-commerce Forum of Africa, said: “We don’t need to reinvent or create the wheel but we can take the best practices and the learning that they have gone through and link them to what we are doing here.”
Therefore, on one hand, Africa represents both a challenge and an opportunity to expand its influence for China. But on the other hand, the Dragon sets a model for the continent, which sees in the partner a unique opportunity to leapfrog its own shortcomings to find development through an advanced e-commerce environment.
The new Indian rules for e-commerce companies could have to do with the fall in investments
E-commerce giant Amazon has invested $ 395 million dollars in its market unit in India this year, which is one-third of what it did in 2018 with $ 1.3 billion, according to local newspaper Economic Times. With only three months to go to the end of the year, it seems likely that this will be the first time since 2012 that Amazon’s annual investment in India has fallen.
Analysts tracing the history of Amazon India have mentioned that over the past seven years, its investments have steadily increased year by year with a phenomenal peak in 2018. This level could be attributed to Amazon’s entry into the food sector in India.
Amazon’s sharp decline in India has attracted the attention of Indian and US lawmakers
The news of Amazon‘s sharp decline in its investments in India has also attracted the attention of Indian and US legislators. During the Indian summit of the World Economic Forum held in New Delhi, Indian trade minister Piyush Goyal and US trade secretary Wilbur Ross had a long debate on this issue.
Ross asked Goyal for the new guidelines for e-commerce in India regarding its foreign direct investment (FDI) rules, which in the past had put a strain on foreign-funded e-tailers.
India, on the other hand, seems to have become a land of conquest for many Chinese investors. From Tencent to Alibaba, up to pass for Xiaomi.
The decision has also created controversy after local institutions and Amazon
“India is very clear on domestic and political compulsions. We welcome all e-commerce companies that want to work in India as agnostic platforms. We do not want to look at structures that fall within the scope of the law, but in a sense to break the spirit of the same. This is the clear position of the government and we have been clear for decades regarding the BJP” Goyal told Ross.
In his response to Goyal, Ross claimed that Amazon would have spent much more in India if it had not experienced a decline in growth due to e-commerce policies. “It is more important to obtain the most efficient form of retail trade. The demand for a country like India must balance those economic benefits for the population as a whole, even going against the special interests of the retail segment or competitors. nationals, “the US trade secretary said.
With over 500 million monthly active users in 154 countries worldwide, TikTok is rethinking its future
TikTok, the ByteDace app that deals with short videos, has labeled the United States, Japan and India as strategic countries to favor its expansion abroad, according to Chinese media reports LatePost.
While the United States and Japan have already been popular markets for TikTok, the Beijing-based startup has increased its emphasis on the Indian market, where the company has increased the number of active daily users (DAUs) by 50 million units in 2019 .
The number of new users of TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin reached 188 million in the first quarter of 2019, with an increase on an annual basis of 70% and half of them came from India, as reported by the analysis organization Sensor Tower app. The Indians also installed the TikTok app 89 million times in the first quarter of the year, more than eight times last year’s number. By comparison, the United States has gained around 13 million installations over the same period of time.
To continue its growth in the Indian market, TikTok will join Vigo
Due to this rapid growth, India has been updated to the list of strategic countries, although it had previously been ranked lower in terms of average revenue per user (ARPU), an indicator applied internally by the company to differentiate the markets.
The move also comes after a backlash that the company faced in April, when the Indian government ordered TikTok to be removed from Google and the Apple App Store for two weeks. The sanction came due to alleged encouragement to obscenity and other illegal content. After the reversal of judicial prohibition, the app quickly returned to the country’s main downloads.
To continue its growth in the Indian market, some sources have reported that TikTok will be joining Vigo, another video-sharing app owned by ByteDance.
TikTok continues its rise in the world, with a special focus on South America
But between the new frontiers of the app there is not only India, Even the Brazilian market, in fact, has attracted the attention of TikTok’s plans. Everything comes from when its competitors, including the Kuaishou platform (marketed outside China as Kwai) and the live streaming app YY, are growing rapidly in many South American countries.
Tiktok, meanwhile, removed the UK from selected strategic countries. The Chinese company has been under investigation in the United Kingdom since February, due to the way in which it collects and uses the personal data of young users, with particular attention to the safety of minors present on the platform
The US PayPal will compete with two major payment companies like Alipay and WeChat Pay
PayPal, a company based in the United States, has just become the first foreign payment company to enter the Chinese market. This is confirmed by the People’s Bank of China, which approved the acquisition by the US company of a 70% shareholding in Guofubao Information Technology (GoPay).
PayPal made the acquisition through a subsidiary in Shanghai, Yinbaobao Information Technology. The financial details of the agreement, however, were not disclosed. GoPay is a joint venture between China International Electronic Commerce Center (CIECC) of the Ministry of Commerce and HNA Retailing Holding. According to preliminary information, it has mobile, online and cross-border yuan payment service licenses.
In 2019 the value of transactions for digital payments in China amounts to about $ 1.6 trillion
The deal is expected to end in the fourth quarter of this year, subject to customary closing conditions, said PayPal, which is entering the burgeoning payment market in China.
According to a recent report, the total value of transactions in the country’s digital payments segment amounts to about $ 1.6 trillion in 2019 and is expected to double to around $ 3.1 trillion in 2023. Growth will be driven by digital trade, which has accumulated a total transaction value of $ 988.8 billion in 2019. The main players in the segment are the Alipay and WeChat Pay e-wallet providers.
The real rival will be Alipay, which can count on 4 million users in the USA
Earlier this year, it was reported that Alipay could count on 4 million users in the United States. The company has also stated that the app can be used for in-store payments at 7,000 locations across the country. Payments abroad, on the other hand, are available in 40 countries and regions of the world.
The parent company Alipay Ant Financial has also invested in a series of online payment services abroad, particularly in rapidly growing markets throughout southern and south-east Asia.
China has been leading the world in innovation for the E-commerce industry. One area that we’ve seen Chinese e-commerce take the lead in is the creation of Chinese E-Commerce Festivals. Single’s Day (Double 11), Chinese New Year, and 6.18 are just a few of the major shopping holidays that consistently break records for E-commerce sales in China.
Most of these holidays were created by the major E-commerce platforms to offer discounts and drive sales during these periods. The largest shopping holidays were created by Alibaba and JD.com, showcasing how powerful these companies truly are. While the West has similar holidays like Black Friday & Cyber Monday, these pale in comparison to the scale of the Chinese E-Commerce Festivals.
In this blog we’ll take a look at the largest Chinese E-Commerce Festival, Single’s Day (Double 11), to help businesses obtain a greater understanding of this holiday and make the preparations necessary to take advantage of it.
What is Single’s Day (Double 11)?
Single’s Day is the largest Chinese E-commerce Holiday by far. The event was started by a group of university students in the early 1990s at Nanjing University. With many Chinese university students unable to find romantic partners during their studies, the holiday was created to celebrate being single.
The date, Double 11 (11/11) was chosen as the number “1” looks like a person who is single or alone. The holiday quickly spread from Nanjing University to various locations around Mainland China. With the rise of social media, the holiday became even more well-known across the country.
Nanjing University, the rumored birthplace of Single’s Day
While businesses had begun celebrating the holiday with discounts and promotions to cater to these single consumers, the holiday’s significance changed significantly with the launch of Alibaba’s Single’s Day E-Commerce Festival in 2009.
While the initial event only included 27 brands on the Alibaba platform, T-Mall, the discounts and promotions soon spread to Alibaba’s other platforms like Taobao. Brands on Alibaba’s platforms often offer discounts of up to 80% during this period, giving singles a reason to splurge and treat themselves.
The first Double 11 shopping festival generated a measly USD 7.5 million in sales, but by 2017 sales had eclipsed both Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined with sales reaching USD $25.3 billion. While growth has finally started to slow for the holiday due to increased competition, the shopping holiday remains the largest worldwide in terms of total sales.
Why Has Single’s Day Been So Successful?
While new Chinese e-commerce holidays have appeared throughout the years a survey by Nielsen China revealed that 81% of respondents said Single’s Day is still the one they’d most like to participate in. For every company selling their products into China through E-commerce Double 11 should be an important part of your yearly marketing strategy and be featured prominently in your calendar.
Many attribute the reason for the success of Double 11 due to its inherently selfish nature. Double 11 is a celebration of being single and treating yourself, encouraging shoppers to buy things for themselves rather than for others as is custom with more traditional holidays like Chinese New Year.
Alibaba’s focused on the holiday in its early days by launching the slogan: “ Even if you don’t have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you can at least shop like crazy.” (就算没有男女朋友，至少我们可以疯狂购物).
However, there were a lot of factors that contributed to the astounding success of Double 11 including Alibaba’s logistics network and its investment in promotional activities.
The Evolution of Cainiao: Alibaba’s Logistics Arm
The rapid growth of Double 11 required Alibaba to develop a strong logistics network to handle the massive scale of the holiday. Alibaba’s logistics arm, known as Cainiao, has done a tremendous job in keeping pace with the holiday and ensuring that deliveries go out on time despite the massive amount of orders.
In 2015 alone, the number of orders processed through Alibaba’s platforms reached 467 million, representing a 65% increase in order volume over 2014. To cope with this large growth Cainiao utilized technology to forecast order volume, handle warehousing, and make the necessary preparations to handle this increased volume.
Through this experience, Cainiao has become one of the most efficient logistics providers in the world. Even with the number of orders increasing massively each year, Cainiao has continued to improve in terms of speed and efficiency. In 2018, the total number of Double 11 orders exceeded 1 billion, with the logistics provider completing deliveries for the first 100 million packages within just 2.6 days as compared to 9 days in 2013!
Cainiao also was able to offer same day/next-day delivery to customers living in China’s larger cities. One of the first orders placed on Double 11 in 2017 was fulfilled just 12 minutes after the launch of the Chinese E-Commerce festival.
Promoting Single’s Day: Galas, Movies, and Advertising
Alibaba realized they were onto something when they launched the Single’s Day shopping festival in 2009 and invested in a range of different marketing strategies to drive growth for the event.
After running the event twice, Alibaba began to take the focus off the original holiday Single’s Day and began promoting the idea of Double 11 as the ultimate shopping holiday, rather than a day to celebrate singleness.
While the event had seen tremendous growth due to marketing efforts and more brands joining on the holiday, Alibaba recognized that the event could be even bigger. In 2014 Alibaba finally went public raising an unprecedented 25 billion USD in the world’s largest IPO. With a now overflowing war chest, the company began to invest heavily in marketing for Double 11.
In 2015, Alibaba launched its first Double 11 Gala event broadcast live on national TV. During the gala, Alibaba invited celebrities from all over the world to participate in games, events, and challenges meant to entertain and further drive sales online. Due to the success in viewership for the first event, it has been repeated each year since 2015.
Daniel Craig was one of the many celebrities invited to attend the first Singles Day Gala
While the event is primarily for entertainment purposes, the guests, celebrities, and hosts always remind the audience to go online to check out the deals available for purchase.
This has made the event more than just a shopping festival and made it seem like a real holiday. In many ways, it is similar to the Spring Festival Gala, a star-studded event hosted during the Chinese New Year period, further strengthening the festival’s connection to true Chinese holidays.
Marketing for Single’s day has gotten a bit outlandish at times as well, such as in 2017 when the company released a 24-minute Kung Fu Movie on Double 11 featuring Alibaba CEO Jack Ma and Kung Fu Star Jet Li. You can check out the subtitled version of the trailer below if you want to see Jack Ma showing off his kung fu moves.
Alibaba’s Last Year in Review: More Records Shattered During Single’s Day 2018
Finally, onto the most mind-blowing part of Double 11, the sales.
Alibaba had an absolutely incredible year in 2018, with sales reaching USD $30.7 billion throughout the course of the event, representing growth of 27% compared to the previous year. The first double 11 generated a mere USD 7.5 million dollars in sales. If we look at the growth from 2009 to 2018 this represents an approximately 40,000% increase in sales over the course of the 10 year period.
These numbers completely blow other shopping holidays out of the water. Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined weren’t even able to reach USD $15 billion in sales in 2018. This means that Alibaba alone had more than double the total sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If we count the sales of other Chinese E-commerce platforms alongside Alibaba these two events look rather minuscule in comparison.
However, It’s not just the amount that’s amazing, but also the speed. Sales on T-Mall had reached 10 billion RMB just 2 minutes after the launch of the Chinese E-Commerce Festival.
In terms of deliveries, Alibaba received over 1 billion orders, representing a significant increase over the previous year when orders just barely broke 800 million.
Over 180,000 brands participated in the event in 2018 with 237 of them exceeding RMB 100 million in sales during the event. These 237 brands included some of the more popular international brands in China, like Apple, Dyson, Nestle, Nike, and Adidas.
While overall growth in sales has slowed down to 24%, the growth in sales of imported products was much greater reaching over 63% according to Syntun. Many newer brands to the market had spectacular years with brands like MartiDerm, Moony, and Schiff achieving positions among the top-sellers in China. According to Alibaba, over 40% of its customers made a purchase from an international brand during the 2018 double 11 event!
Other Chinese E-Commerce Platforms Cashing in on Double 11
While Double 11 was started by Alibaba, other Chinese E-Commerce platforms have been cashing in on the holiday as well. JD.com, VIP.com, Pinduoduo, and Suning, were some of the larger players participating in the event as well. Although Alibaba trademarked the name “Double 11” in 2014, preventing other platforms from using it in their advertising, plenty of other platforms try to get in on the action for this shopping extravaganza.
Spending on E-commerce during the 24-hour event reached a total of nearly USD $45 billion. As stated, before Alibaba captured the lion’s share of this spending but other players are beginning to take a larger slice as they also invest in promotions during the period.
JD.com was the closest competitor to Alibaba in 2018, with the total transaction volume on JD.com reaching RMB 159.8 billion (USD ~$23 Billion). Unlike Alibaba’s single day sales promotions, JD.com’s discounts are spread over an 11 day period. Although JD.com was only able to capture 17% of market share on Single’s day itself it’s total sales volumes from the event were truly impressive!
Nearly all of the E-commerce platforms recorded strong gains. Netease’s Kaola reported that its sales multiplied 2.4 times in 2018 while Pinduoduo saw its orders triple year on year.
This just goes to show that even if your brand isn’t on T-Mall you can still cash in on the Double 11 craze!
How To Get The Most Out of Alibaba’s Single’s Day
No matter what platform you’re selling on in China you’ll definitely want to take advantage of the Double 11 extravaganza.
Other than the traditional channels available to brands such as paid advertising and KOL promotion there are some extra steps you should take to ensure that you get the most out of the Chinese E-Commerce Festival.
We’re going to break this part down into two sections, Preparation and Promotion, to help brands at various stages take advantage of this holiday.
Preparation Strategies for Alibaba’s Single’s Day
Preparation for Single’s Day Tip #1. Reputation Management
Chinese consumers tend to do quite a lot of research before making a purchase online. In the months leading up to Double 11, you should ensure that your company has a positive brand image to foster trust among users.
A negative reputation on the Chinese internet can severely hinder your sales potential, so take the steps necessary to improve your ratings, reviews, and mentions across search, social media, and in the news. While a negative reputation is something that brands should try to fix immediately, brands with no reputation at all should also get to work on building social proof and building their brand to help Chinese customers make their decisions.
Simply putting out a few press releases or working with a few trustworthy KOLs can put your brand in a positive light and prevent any negative information from putting a damper on your sales. If there’s no information about your brand on the Chinese internet shooting off a press release or two can at least ensure that there’s some information about your brand in Baidu search results.
While this kind of marketing might not be the most exciting as it’s unlikely to directly drive sales on its own, it’s an important step to making sure that there are no barriers to purchasing for your target audience.
Preparation for Single’s Day Tip #2. Perfect Your Product Descriptions
If you’re familiar with Chinese E-Commerce you already likely know that product descriptions in China are incredibly long.
Chinese consumers are by nature very distrustful and typically spend long periods of time in the consideration stage of the buyer journey. Chinese consumers want to be sure they are getting value for their money and are not buying something that doesn’t live up to its promises.
It’s due to this reason that most brands create extremely detailed and thorough product descriptions on E-commerce marketplaces to ensure that the answer to every question a potential customer might have is readily available. Having it available at the point of purchase also results in an increased chance of conversion.
Even for something as simple as shoes, product descriptions on T-mall can be absolutely huge.
While you might think your product descriptions are adequate, make sure you check out your competition to ensure you’re not lagging behind. It seems in the world of Chinese E-commerce that there’s seriously no such thing as TOO much detail when it comes to product descriptions.
Preparation for Single’s Day Tip #3. Scout Out the Competition
This is probably the most crucial step for preparing for the Double 11 Festival. There were over 180,000 brands that participated in the festivities in 2018, so it’s very likely you’ll face some serious competition.
Don’t just do a cursory glance at the competition, analyze each and every aspect of their business and products to determine where your advantages and disadvantages lie.
Are the competitors’ product descriptions more compelling? Are popular KOLs recommending their products? What is their pricing strategy? What social media platforms are they leveraging?
All these are good questions to look into prior to the start of the event and honestly just for doing business in general. This might seem like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many companies don’t take the time to do an in-depth check on their rivals.
You can even just check on T-Mall to see some top-level information on how well your competitors’ products are selling, customer feedback, and more!
Once the countdown to the event gets started it’s a good idea to check out the promotions they start running in the lead-up to the event. Closely monitoring your competitor’s activities can give you the information you need to adjust and counter their strategies to ensure you stay on top!
How to Promote Your Brand and Drive Sales During Single’s Day
Single’s Day Promotion Tip #1. Show Off Those Discounts!
This is one of the most common strategies for promoting your deals during the Double 11 festival. Most brands begin showing off their deals for the holiday nearly a month in advance to build excitement and get customers thinking about purchasing. A survey by Nielsen China showed that this is the most enticing method of promotion for Chinese consumers.
While this tactic has been around for decades, it’s still one of the best ways to show the potential savings a user can receive if they purchase during the Double 11 holiday. Brands both big and small take advantage of this tactic to create urgency and show users how much the product normally sells for.
Showing the before and after price can be done in a number of different ways. Many brands choose to use digital advertisements to showcase their discounts while others simply keep it on their product descriptions. Depending on the price sensitivity of your target audience this can be an incredibly effective method for boosting sales during the Double 11 holiday.
Another reason this simple method is so effective is the tendency of Chinese consumers to make impulse purchases during the holiday. While Chinese are traditionally research-driven in their purchasing behavior, large discounts encourage users to make impulse decisions for trial purchases.
Single’s Day Promotion Tip #2. Offering Discounts in Exchange for Pre-Orders
Another method that’s become incredibly popular in recent years is a focus on pre-ordering. As mentioned previously, brands often begin displaying their discounts and promotions for the Double 11 holiday nearly a month in advance. For 2018, pre-orders on T-Mall became available on October 20th, giving users nearly 3 weeks to pre-order their desired items.
Since brands are already releasing this information quite early, it makes sense that they would begin to accept pre-orders. To further encourage this behavior many brands now provide additional discounts to customers who choose to pre-order before the arrival of Double 11.
If users deposit RMB 100 towards the purchase of this computer before the start of Double 11, they can receive RMB 300 off during the shopping festival. Users can also win a free gift!
This not only helps brands to lock in sales early, but it also helps them to forecast their sales volume and make preparations accordingly. According to Nielsen China, offering discounts in exchange for pre-orders is the 2nd most popular method for promotion during the Double 11 holiday.
One brand that took advantage of this strategy was L’Oreal. L’Oreal allowed users to deposit money in advance and receive coupons with greater value during the Double 11 event. For example, users who deposited 50 RMB were given 70 RMB to spend during the Double 11 event. Customers who had deposited money into this scheme were also given a chance to win free gifts through lucky draws, further encouraging users to deposit money in advance.
Single’s Day Promotion Tip #3. Coupons, Coupons, and More Coupons
Coupons are incredibly popular across all Chinese e-commerce channels; however, this is taken to an extreme during the Double 11 holiday. Nearly every brand issues coupons for use during the period, however, a few have been trying new tactics with some success in recent years.
One of the more recent trends in terms of coupons for the Double 11 holiday is brands not simply issuing coupons for free but selling them for later use. Many brands sell these coupons for an absurdly cheap price (e.g. RMB 0.5), as once users have taken the steps to purchase a coupon, they are more likely to actually use it and make a purchase.
Through selling coupons for use during Double 11, brands can make more accurate predictions and forecasts for their sales volume during the holiday allowing them to prepare and ensure that they have adequate stock to meet consumer demand.
Whether you offer coupons for free or sell them for small amounts, brands have recognized that this is an effective method for driving sales during Double 11. This is something that will likely continue to be used by brands during Single’s Day for years to come.
Single’s Day Promotion Tip #4. Leverage Social Media
In China’s fragmented internet market social media is king. Brands all across China leverage social media to build awareness, drive sales, and promote their offerings. However, many brands go into overdrive during the Double 11 season to drive traffic to their e-commerce stores.
Chinese E-Commerce platforms themselves even advertise their offerings through China’s social media platforms. For example, T-Mall ran a massive campaign leveraging WeChat and Weibo in 2018 to boost their red packet campaign in 2018. Through this campaign, Alibaba rewarded users with money for logging into Alibaba apps and visiting chosen brand stores.
There are many ways brands can leverage social media to drive traffic and boost sales during the Double 11 holiday. Brands can choose to collaborate with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) to gain greater exposure and build trust among consumers or work directly with platforms to access paid advertising.
The ultimate goal of using social media is to find your target customers where they are. Brands should promote their offerings across various social media platforms and forums to reach out to their target audience in a way that shows they understand their audience.
Single’s Day Promotion Tip #5. Release New or Exclusive Products
While this might be something more exclusive to larger brands, releasing exclusive products for the Double 11 holiday has proven to be incredibly effective for many different brands.
Dyson saw great success with this strategy last year with the release of its Airwrap hair-curler which launched exclusively on T-Mall during Double 11 2018. By advertising the product on social media and limiting purchasing exclusively to T-mall the brand was able to sell over 1,500 unites within just 3 minutes of the product launch.
Budweiser’s Special Edition Cans Released Exclusively for Double 11
Budweiser, the American beer brand, also launched exclusive packaging for the event. It was able to sell all 30,000 special edition packs that day! Both of these cases show how releasing exclusive or new products can result in a drastic spike in sales.
Conclusion
Double 11 is definitely a holiday that both shoppers and sellers need to pay attention to. However, taking advantage of the largest Chinese E-Commerce festival isn’t easy. Competition is fierce, and brands need to take the necessary steps to ensure that they are able to fully take advantage of it.
This guide should offer most brands a good place to start, but brands should conduct adequate research into their industry and competition to determine the best means of promotion during this period. We hope this guide helped and best of luck to all our readers for the Double 11 shopping festival in 2019!
The goal of the partnership is to support the use of WeChat Pay for Chinese tourists who visit Japan and at the same time provide LINE Pay to local users in Japan
Tokyo and Beijing are getting closer. Nowadays, Beijing and Chinese customers are extremely important for Japanese companies. Chinese love “made in Japan” products: Japanese cosmetics and Tokyo fashion are a real trend in China. As a result, Chinese tourism in the Land of the Risen Sun is growing so that many shops in Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto started to use Alipay and WeChat Pay to please Chinese customers.
Thus, WeChat Pay and LINE Pay agreement had not surprised experts. Bilateral trade and investment have kept China and Japan closely integrated in recent years. Moreover, China and Japan are pursuing greater cooperation on a number of fronts, from economic development to international trade and currency internationalization. Now fintech too.
According to WeChat Global, on September 11th, WeChat Pay and LINE Pay have decided to further deepen their cooperation in the field of mobile payments. To this end, WeChat Pay will be integrated with LINE Pay merchants in Japan. Thanks to this cooperation, WeChat Pay users will be able to scan a QR code of the LINE Pay merchant to pay with their WeChat Pay.
According to the company, LINE Pay now has about 32 million registered users in Japan
LINE Pay offers easy payment services in partnership with global credit card brands and cooperation with WeChat Pay dates back to November 27, when the two companies decided to hold a press conference in Tokyo, Japan, announcing that the two sides would cooperate to promote mobile payments in Japan.
LINE Corporation was founded on September 4, 2000, as a Hangame Japan as a part of Hangame, a South Korean game company owned by NHN at the time. LINE Pay is its payment service released in December 2014, which allows users to pay through the app in affiliated online stores and after registering their credit cards.
WeChat Pay’s cross-border payment service has now reached 49 countries and regions outside of mainland China in accordance with local regulations
As already happened with other Chinese brands, such as Alipay, for foreign operators to allow the use of payments with Chinese software is a great way to increase tourism and sales. Furthermore, with the development of the Chinese economy and the increase in outbound travel, WeChat Pay has become one of the main objectives to increase its market share outside of China.
To add, that the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan continues to grow and the service will make it even more convenient for Chinese tourists visiting Japan. According to data from the Japanese tourist agency, in 2018 8.38 million Chinese tourists visited Japan, making it the largest group of international tourists in the country.
Tapestry Inc. is bringing more of its brands – including Coach and Kate Spade – to Alibaba Group’s dedicated platform for luxury and premium goods, Tmall Luxury Pavilion.
Following the launch of its footwear label Stuart Weitzman last October, the New York-based luxury and lifestyle group said Thursday that Coach will officially open a flagship store on the Pavilion in December, followed by Kate Spade early next year.
Tapestry said the brands will adopt Tmall’s new “Flagship Store 2.0” format to “offer elevated, rich shopping experiences for customers,” such as more personalized content. They will be among the first to tap the newly upgraded layout.
“Tapestry is committed to the Chinese market,” Tapestry Chairman and CEO Jide Zeitlin said.
“Tmall is at the forefront of the fast-paced digital ecosystem in China, highlighted by their innovative approach and consumer-centric attitude,” Zeitlin said. “Given Tapestry’s focus on customer experience, creating innovative strategic partnerships with leaders such as Tmall helps us to connect our unique lifestyle brands with the important fashion- and digitally savvy Chinese consumer.”
The partnership would help Tapestry gain deeper insights into the China market, fueling its efforts to create seamless experiences for consumers both online and offline, the company said.
The announcement comes as Tapestry unveils its “2020 ChinaNext” digital innovation roadmap, which looks to drive engagement in the region and explore best practices it can also leverage globally. Noam Paransky, chief digital officer at Tapestry, said that partnering with Tmall, which allows them to connect with a broader audience, is a foundational part of this strategy.
“We are committed to offering a compelling experience for Chinese consumers wherever they choose to shop: our stores, direct brand and third-party websites or social platforms,” Paransky said.
ECommerce Nest 
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