Alibaba’s Singles’ Day Targets Mobile, X-Border Commerce

As Alibaba prepares for its annual Global Shopping Festival — 11.11, AKA Singles’ Day — there’s just one question for the commerce world to ask.

Can Alibaba surpass its massive $9.3 billion same-day sales record?

That certainly depends on how the eCommerce giant markets the event this year. That’s why Alibaba is hyper-focused this year on globalization, logistics and mobile and omnichannel commerce.

The Nov. 11 shopping day will get its first major promo on Oct. 13 at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, China. That’s where spectators can get a peek into the more than 100 brands and retailers, countries and trade associations that will be present at the event. The event will also have participation from Alibaba Executive Chairman Jack Ma, along with CEO Daniel Zhang and President Michael Evans.

Alibaba’s Singles’ Day has made a name for itself for whipping the sales figures from Black Friday and Cyber Monday off the eCommerce map. In fact, Alibaba was able to sell more thought its sites on that one day alone than all of Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday combined.

Now, with last year’s momentum behind it, Alibaba is hoping to shake things up by working with more international brands, foreign governments, trade associations, global retailers and brick-and-mortar stores inside China. And it’s got the stats from 2014 to back up another potentially big year for the eCommerce giant.

This includes:

• ~27,000 merchants from around the world participated, including 42,000 global brands
• 278 million orders were made in a 24-hour period.
• 42.6 percent of total GMV was transacted on mobile devices, which was up from 21 percent of total GMV during the 11.11 sale in 2013.
• Consumers from 217 countries and regions were able to purchase more than 1 million products available on Alibaba marketplaces.

To put these figures into perspective, Alibaba’s shopping day started in 2009 and had just 27 merchants on Tmall.com. Six years later, Alibaba’s flagship event has turned into a global shopping festival that brings in millions of buyers and tens of thousands of merchants.

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