Nov. 11 has never been a regular day for Alibaba and all the online shoppers in China since Alibaba made this day the world’s biggest online shopping day in 2009. “Alibaba recorded its first $1 billion in sales this Singles’ Day in only 17 minutes—it took about an hour last year.” This year, the sales of the two shopping website, Tmall.com and Taobao.com of Alibaba are expected to be $8.7 billion, a 40 per cent increase from last year.
Why would this day be so special? There are a number of reasons to push it forward. The most important reason is that the day 11.11 has been called the Singles’ Day by young people in collages in China at where the major online shoppers exist. As the Singles’ Day was getting popular, Alibaba bought up the concept of Shopping Festival to encourage single people to shop and provided free shipping as well as heavy discounts in the 2009. The success of 11.11 results from the concept of “Shopping Festival” proposed by the CEO Jack Ma and implement it with full thoughtful plans.
Sources:
http://www.illuminantpartners.com/2012/04/09/tmall-logo-amusing-heritage/