Alibaba's 11.11 lands big sales, attracts US companies selling to China

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has released a batch of new sales data from its annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, which just wrapped up following an 11-day campaign that included two dates for discount-heavy shopping.

According to the company, the event generated USD $74.1 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV). Yesterday the company revealed that, about 30 minutes into November 11, total GMV exceeded $56 billion.

The United States was the top country selling to China by GMV, with US brands accounting for $5.4 billion of the event's total GMV. Outside of China, consumers also bought heavily from Japan, Korea, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Alibaba estimates that 800 million consumers participated in 11.11 this year, with the number of orders peaking at 583,000 orders per second.

"This year's 11.11 demonstrates the opportunity of the Chinese consumer market for brands, retailers, small businesses and farmers around the world," said Alibaba Group president Michael Evans. "Today's businesses need both a China strategy and a digital strategy to succeed, particularly in the face of the challenges posed by the pandemic. Alibaba is focused on helping brands around the world both tap into the China opportunity and digitize their operations - helping them build growth, resiliency, and a direct customer connection."

The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival began in 2009 with participation from just 27 merchants as an event for merchants and consumers to raise awareness about the value of online shopping. This year, 14 million products from 250,000 brands from 89 countries and markets were for sale on Tmall. Around 5,000 brands joined 11.11 for the first time, including 2,600 brands from international markets.

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