Topline: With Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, the world’s biggest shopping festival, bringing in a record $38.4 billion haul this year, a handful of brands like Apple, L’Oréal and Nestlé were among the biggest winners, grossing hundreds of millions in sales.
- Alibaba said on Tuesday that 15 different companies each grossed over $143 million (1 billion yuan) in sales: Chinese brands Huawei and Xiaomi, U.S. brands Bose, Estée Lauder, Gap, Levi’s, Nike, The North Face and Apple, and other international brands Nestlé, H&M, Uniqlo, MUJI, L’Oréal and Philips.
- Almost 300 different brands each sold over $14.3 million (100 million yuan) in gross merchandise value during Singles’ Day: Those included LVMH’s Givenchy, sportswear manufacturer Under Armour and home appliance makers Dyson and Philips.
- Food and beverage brands like Starbucks and Mondelez also did “very well,” Alibaba’s chief marketing officer, Chris Tung, told Yahoo Finance.
- The most popular import products sold on Singles’ Day were food supplements, followed by makeup, diapers and face wash, Reuters reported.
- International orders made up a big portion of sales this year: The most popular products among Chinese consumers came from Japan, the U.S., South Korea, Australia and Germany, according to Alibaba.
- Alibaba rival JD.com, which started its sales campaign on November 1, 2019, sold more than $29 billion over the 11 days leading up to Singles’ Day.
Key background: In the eleventh edition of Singles’ Day, or 11/11, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba set a new sales record of $38.4 billion in gross merchandise volume over the 24-hour shopping bonanza. The total number of delivery orders on 11/11 also increased 24% to 1.29 billion, compared to 1.04 billion last year.
Surprising fact: 90% of sales on Singles’ Day in China happened via smartphone—“a rate completely unheard of in the U.S.,” Adobe executive Taylor Shreiner wrote in a blog post. “Singles’ Day payment systems, phone games and mobile live streams are all elements that could effectively be ported to the U.S. and elsewhere.”