This year, Alibaba reported a record-breaking RMB498.2 billion ($74.1 billion) in total gross merchandise volume (GMV) for its Singles Day or 11.11 sales. Unlike previous years when Singles Day sales were recorded over 24 hours, this year's activities started from 1 November and there was a three-day period in addition to the actual day on 11 November when special discounts were offered.

COVID-19 has accelerated online shopping as the total GMV this year is almost double of last year's 24-hour GMV of $38 billion (RMB 268.4 billion).

Scale of its digital ecosystem

This year, about 250,000 brands participated in the shopping festival, of which 12.4% were overseas brands and 2,600 were first-time participants.

More than 470 brands achieved more than $15 million (RMB 100 million) in sales, including Apple, L’Oréal, Haier, Estée Lauder, Nike, Huawei, Midea, Lancôme, Xiaomi and Adidas. Over 1,800 emerging brands surpassed their GMV from 11.11 last year and 94 emerging brands enjoyed sales growth of over 1,000%. As a result, 357 emerging brands became top sellers in their respective subcategories. The United States emerged as the top country selling to China by GMV. Other countries, in alphabetical order, include: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and UK.

In April 2020, Alibaba Group chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang announced its 2020 Spring Thunder Initiative to help SMEs during the pandemic. Measures include new market expansion through Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, immediate financial support, digitisation of manufacturing clusters and digital transformation of the agriculture sector. More than a million merchants and 300,000 factories from over 2,000 industry clusters were involved in Singles Day activities. 

Alibaba’s underlying technology platform...