Alibaba Group’s annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival will showcase 250,000 brands, including 6,000 overseas brands, which are expected to boost deliveries of parcels and orders by 30 percent this year.
In today’s virtual 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival Asia Pacific Press conference, Chris Tung Chief Marketing Officer of Alibaba Group announced that for the first time, this year’s 11.11 will feature two sales platforms as a major innovation to the annual sales festival to bring more opportunities to participating brands and businesses.
The first shopping window will happen on November 1 and will run for three days while the big day is on November 11.
“We double the numbers of shopping windows to make sure consumers have enough time to shop and make sure we support all our merchants in this challenging time,” said Tung. This is aimed to serve the estimated 800 million shoppers for over 200,000 brands from 89 countries and over 2 million new products.
“We have lots of stuff but this is going to be a very special double 11. The momentum is great and China is ready to buy, we’ve put up 250,000 brands together joining this year,” said Tung, Alibaba Group’s chief marketing officer since January 2016.
James Zhao, general manager of Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Global Supply Chain Cainiao Network, said they expect 30 percent increase in the delivery of parcels this year from last year’s 1.8 billion parcels to 84 countries globally.
This is made possible with their 400 bonded warehouses in China to ensure shoppers in China receive their orders in half a day. They have also put up global fulfillment centers in 5 countries so they can ship directly from overseas. The expansion of their global logistics network would enable 24-hour delivery in China and 72 hours globally.
As a logistics company, he said, they use all forms of mobility including horses and camels to reach Alibaba customers on time.
Zhao also reported they have shipped tons and tons of personal protective equipment to countries in the past ten months this year.
Jessica Liu Co, president and regional head of commercial of Lazada Group, the marketplace and online shopping platform of Alibaba focusing in Southeast Asia, noted of the tremendous ecommerce growth this year in the 6 countries in the region where Lazada operates.
She noted that southeast Asia is already the fastest growing ecommerce region before the pandemic but it has grown tremendously this year as young entrepreneurs in ASEAN are eager to join the Lazada platform to meet consumer needs driven by the pandemic.
“I do believe this is a good opportunity to leverage Lazada to penetrate consumers in this area,” she said. Unlike China, most consumers in southeast Asia have not been shopping online but their behavior was changed during the pandemic period. Most shopped products are toys, kitchen ware, and office equipment as more people are working at home.