Double Happiness for Tmall

Tmall, China's biggest B2C online shopping platform under Alibaba, saw transaction values of 168.2 billion yuan (US$25.9B) on November 11, Chinese Single's Day, now known as the Double 11 Shopping Festival.

The sales volume, according to Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong, was 39 percent higher than that of the last Shopping Festival. Zhang attributed the growth to what he called “the big social collaboration.” According to Zhang, more than 200 countries and regions participated in the 2017 event, with the sales volume of 167 vendors exceeding 100 million yuan (US$15.4M). Seventeen online stores exceeded a sales volume of more than 500 million yuan (US$76.9M) and six exceeded one billion yuan (US$153.8M). Foreign brands contributed to around 40 percent of the total volume.

The annual sales extravaganza provided a good chance for Alibaba to realize its “new retailing” strategy, which aims to better connect offline and online shops. Before the Shopping Festival, Alibaba reportedly helped over 600 retailers upgrade their technology to become part of Alibaba's warehouse and logistics center. Alibaba has also rebuilt around 100,000 retailers into smart shops which enabled the users to track down outof-stock commodities from other chain stores. Zhang claimed that Alibaba will continue to launch sales promotions in ever more creative ways.