Following my 2 earlier posts on Alibaba Singles Day (Preparations 2020: https://outsideinlens.substack.com/p/alibaba-singles-day-preparations and Unilever 11.11 Strategy: https://outsideinlens.substack.com/p/alibaba-singles-day-unilever-1111), this is the 3rd one in the series covering the ‘Impressions’ of the 2020 edition that concluded yesterday. With this short write-up, I am hoping to bring out the really ‘marquee highlights’ of a really spectacular event. I am feeling the pressure of a sports editor that needs to bring out the truly memorable moments of a fantastic tennis match or a Formula 1 race. Here goes:
Quick Look at Record-breaking Numbers (Yet Again) in 2020:
Festival GMV: The 2020 11.11 “Global Shopping Festival” generated RMB 498.2 billion (US$ 74.1 billion) in GMV during the 11-day campaign from November 1-11, an increase of 26% compared to same timeframe in 2019
Brands and New Products: 31,766 overseas brands offered goods on Alibaba’s cross-border platforms this 11.11 – offering 1.2 million new products to Chinese consumers
RMB100 Million GMV: 474 brands participating in each surpassed RMB100 million (USD$14.9 million) in GMV; It took Nike only 1 minute to generate over RMB100 million in GMV
Peak Orders: Number of Orders created at the Peak – 583,000 Orders/Second
What Was ‘Routine’ Innovation at Scale
Let me be very clear what I mean by ‘routine’. When it comes to the Alibaba Singles Day Festival, these initiatives will be outright wow for all global markets out of China, but it can be considered as a routine feature at an exceptional event. The Exception truly comes from delivering these Innovations at Scale
·The Alibaba Business Operating System (ABOS) Harness: International Brands that tapped the ABOS at this year’s 11.11 include McDonald’s, Starbucks, Unilever and L’Oreal – whereby a cross-functional Alibaba team helped them harness all the services they need from Alibaba’s digital ecosystem – including retail, payment, digital marketing, logistics, cloud-computing, on-demand local services or anything else
Brands Easily Surpass 2019 GMV: Over 90% of participating brands’ GMV had surpassed their 11.11 full-day sales records from 2019, including Net-a-Porter, Bottega Veneta, Qeelin, Coach, Michael Kors — all of which had hit that milestone within the first hour of the event
Hit Categories This Year: Health & Wellness, Home Furnishings and Jewelry. Notably, the jewelry category saw the fastest growth, exceeding the category’s total sales from last year in just half an hour
Livestreaming Takes Centre-stage: According to Gartner, Brands were streaming anywhere from 14 to 24 hours a day. 28 livestreaming channels on Taobao Live each surpassed RMB100 million in GMV. Their ranks included pioneers and stars, like Viya Huang and Austin Li. US Player Bissell, a 143-year-old Michigan-based floor-cleaning products company, executed 16 straight hours of livestreaming its vacuums and other products during 11.11 and it was critical to more-than-quadrupling its sales from a year earlier, according to Asia MD Max Bissell
Livestreaming Diversity Rises: Livestreamers have gone main-stream in Alibaba’s ecosystem (including a Livestreaming Incubator in Hangzhou) and are now online 24/7 and come from all walks of life, from farmers and personal shoppers to celebrities. Watch how they connect brands and their products with consumers –
Cainiao Logistics Delivers Miracles Again: After handling 1.88 billion 11.11-related delivery orders last year, Alibaba’s Cainiao logistics unit this year broke that record handily, processing 2.32 billion orders in 2020
During this year’s 11.11 pre-sales period, Cainiao’s smart logistics platform leveraged AI algorithms to assign and ship packages to with a certain range of consumers. That meant that packages could be more-quickly dispatched to buyers once 11.11 officially started
700 chartered flights ensured fulfillment of cross-border product deliveries. To speed up delivery of overseas goods to China, Cainiao worked with international merchants to move their products into seven Cainiao e-hubs. Cainiao also rolled out new self-service technology at its post stations to enable fast parcel collection by consumers
Cainiao also got into the livestreaming game in a big way this year, introducing cameras at different shipping and collection points so consumers could check up on the status of their packages. Over 100 million consumers tuned into Cainiao’s livestreams
What Was New
Luxury Takes Lead:
A Large number of luxury brands (who were reluctant to join the sales extravaganza earlier for the fear of damaging their reputation) took part this year and launched focused Singles Day promotions, as they struggled for sales in the Western Markets. Also, Luxury brands have realized that they can join this big party without doing massive discounts, but instead building brand equity with wider audiences
Example 1: Up-market jeweler Cartier hosted its 1st live-streaming show on Taobao Live, showcasing a $28.3m necklace to an audience of almost 800,000 people
Example 2: French fashion brand Chloe, taking part in Singles Day for the first time, quickly sold out of its handbags – showcasing the opportunity that high-end brands pursued to sell-off their spring-summer stocks which weren’t sold due to lockdowns
Example 3:Longchamp launched ‘special-edition’ embroidered Le Pliage bags, in the most popular color – Hawthorn – that were offered only on Tmall Luxury Pavilion. They were able to acquire new customers from almost anywhere, including from cities such as Urumqi, Hohhot or Xishuangbanna
Nearly 200 luxury and designer brands on Tmall Luxury Pavilion participated in this year’s 11.11, doubling the number of brands from 2019. Many top luxury brands also joined for the 1st time, including Prada, Vacheron Constantin, Piaget, Balenciaga and Kenzo
About 70% of paying customers of luxury products on Tmall Luxury Pavilion were making their first luxury purchase there. And this group of new luxury customers represented nearly 70% of the total luxury-goods sales generated on the Pavilion during 11.11
Virtual Cat Gamification
Millions of shoppers were raising Virtual Cats since late October. They had been spending 4-5 hours every day feeding and dressing up a virtual cat on their mobile phones. And, they were not playing for the sake of caring for a digital pet. What they were really after were coupons for products sold during the Singles’ Day Sale
Getting friends to join a team lead to even bigger deals, while encouraging the consumers to spend more time on the Apps
Alibaba Group Holding’s Taobao said they were distributing 2 billion Yuan (US$302 million) through virtual games this year – including the budgets for Singles Day. They distributed the money in “red packets”, or shopping coupons, through a game in which players’ level-up virtual cats. Users earned virtual coins and spent them on feeding their virtual cats. Players could also dress up their cats as they level up, and they could team up with other players to win group coupons. More generous coupons are available once a cat reaches a certain level
Other tasks users can complete to earn more coins include watching a merchant’s live stream, searching for certain product categories, and spending at least 15 seconds browsing a certain brand’s store or a product recommendation page
What Was Exceptional
Singles Day Sale from US and Europe are Rising, for Brands as well as Consumers:GMV for U.S. brands taking part was $5.39 billion for the entire shopping period, the largest contribution from a single country or region outside of China. It is nearly 50% of Amazon Prime Day Sales numbers that hit $10.40 billion globally over the two-day period spanning Oct. 13 and Oct. 14, up from $7.16 billion during the 48-hour event in July 2019. According to forecasts, sales made during Singles' Day in 2020 are predicted to reach 1.44 billion British pounds in the United Kingdom, the highest among the European countries
11.11 Pitch Fest Initiative for Small Businesses – Strategy to Merchandise to Marketing to SCM
The Go Global 11.11 Pitch Fest, which took place in September, offered brands – including those without physical operations in China – an opportunity to have their products featured during Alibaba’s upcoming 11.11 Global Shopping Festival
Selected entrants received hands-on advice from Tmall Global, as well as marketing resources and consumer insights to help grow their businesses. Brands were fast-tracked to launch on the platform under Overseas Fulfillment program – a low-cost, low-risk way for brands to test waters & fine-tune their go-to-market strategies before making a full-fledged entry into China
The program has allowed international companies, such as baby skincare brand Evereden, to make use of Tmall Global’s warehouses to sell to Chinese consumers without the need for a retail presence in the market
Other notable businesses who could sell directly to millions of Chinese consumers include Texas skincare brand Supergoop, California apparel brand Avocado, Washington home and kitchen brand Sage, Missouri pet-food brand Solid Gold, New Hampshire skincare brand Badger Balm, California cosmetics brand ColourPop and Florida health-supplement brand NeoCell
Global Influencers: Tmall expanded its Global Influencers Program to support overseas Brands
Magic Johnson joined a special livestreaming session hosted by Alibaba to unveil new skincare products from Uncle Bud’s, in addition to initiatives by Taylor Swift, Victoria Beckham and Selena Gomez in the earlier editions
Since its launch last year, the influencer incubator has attracted more than 6,000 Chinese and international key opinion leaders (KOLs). And this group of live content creators has worked with over 4,000 international brands from 50 countries to accelerate their growth in China
The Arrival of Virtual Anchors
Merchants streaming on Taobao Live for 11.11 were able to harness Alibaba DAMO’s “virtual anchor” technology to keep their channels going 24/7. AI-powered avatars interacted with audiences and answered their questions about consumer products using intelligent cognitive and perception technologies. They relied on multi-module algorithms that included natural language processing and speech recognition
They also championed real-time translation capability during 11.11 livestreaming sessions on international e-commerce platform AliExpress. The technology is based on a self-developed speech algorithm that canceled out ambient and irrelevant noise, understood slang, colloquialisms and industry terms. It worked with multiple language pairs, allowing viewers to watch a Chinese livestream and see what’s being said – real-time – in English, Russian, Spanish or French languages
In Conclusion
Three key observations caught my eye in context of the Singles Day Sale and are well articulated below:
Joseph Tsai – Executive Vice Chairman Alibaba Group – believes that things are not going to get back to normal for Offline Stores in China (and maybe elsewhere in the world, according to me). And, in China, shopping is a sport, it is entertainment. It’s no longer about just going onto a website and scrolling through a product catalog. Hence, there is a need to build and deliver Immersive Experiences for consumers and that is the true Proposition of the Singles Day Sale by Alibaba every year. Once new and “nice to have,” livestreaming to educate consumers and sell products has taken center stage in China’s online shopping, as consumers seek a fully immersive experience
Echoing these sentiments, Allison Malmsten of Daxue Consulting reckons that as shopping in China becomes more engaging and social, selling products alone just doesn’t cut it anymore. And therefore, Brands have to get more competitive to keep and maintain user attention
Michael Evans – President Alibaba Group – believes that “For all brands, big or small, a China strategy & a digital strategy is going to be absolutely critical to success in the future” – starting maybe with the Singles Day Sale participation…
References and Sources
1) Alibaba Business Operating System (ABOS): https://www.alizila.com/alibabas-11-11-shows-retail-boom-in-china/
2) Luxury Takes Lead at Alibaba Singles Day Sale: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54876528
3) Longchamp on Tmall Luxury Pavilion: https://www.alizila.com/longchamp-marks-11-11-with-china-exclusive-totes-on-tmall-luxury-pavilion/
4) Twitter Posts by @AlibabaGroup
5) Tmall Global Influencers Program: https://www.alizila.com/tmall-global-expands-global-influencers-program-to-support-overseas-brands/
6) Alibaba Pitch Fest: https://www.alizila.com/alibaba-11-11-pitch-fest-event-help-us-brands-go-global/
7) Amazon Prime Day Sales: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/article/amazon-prime-day-sales/
8) UK Alibaba Singles Day Sale Projections: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1089706/sales-forecast-for-singles-day-in-european-countries/#:~:text=Singles'%20Day%20spending%20in%20Europe%202019%2D2020%2C%20by%20country&text=Celebrated%20on%20November%2011%2C%20Singles,to%20see%20a%20general%20increase
9) Virtual Games: https://www.scmp.com/abacus/tech/article/3108768/singles-day-mini-games-keep-shoppers-coming-back-more-taobao-and-jdcom