Last week was China’s 11.11 Festival, also known as Singles Day, one of the biggest dates on the global ecommerce calendar. Having previously set online payment processing records, 11.11 is a key indicator of the state of both domestic Chinese ecommerce and cross-border ecommerce – as well as providing some insights into what the ecommerce industry can expect from Black Friday in just a few weeks.

With this in mind, here’s our main takeaways from some of the biggest participants in Singles Day this year:

Tmall.com from Alibaba

• Running from November 1 -11, Alibaba’s 13th annual 11.11 Global Shopping Festival generated CNY540bn ($85bn) in gross merchandise volume (GMV) during the 11-day campaign – an 8% increase from 2020.
• A record 290,000 brands participated in 11.11 this year, of which 65% are small and medium-sized businesses, manufacturers from industrial belts and new brands.
• 78 brands grew from CNY10m in GMV last year to CNY100m this year, while 698 brands grew GMV from CNY1m to CNY10m over the same period.
• More than 45% of consumers that made purchases were born in the ‘90s and ‘00s. Consumers born in the ’00s increased by 25% year-over-year.
• More than 1.3 million new products were offered by over 29,000 overseas brands that participated via Tmall Global this year, with some 2,800 overseas brands joining for the first time.

JD.com

• JD.com reported record-breaking transaction volume of CNY349bn ($55bn) during the single-day period on 11.11 – more than 28% increase from last year’s CNY272billion.
• 31 brands’ sales exceed CNY1bn ($160m).
• Apple’s sales exceed CNY10bn ($1.6bn). Transaction volume of iPhones surpassed CNY100m ($16m) 2 seconds after the sales began.
• More than 100,000 users made a payment with China’s CBDC eCNY on the JD app during 11.11.

Xiaomi

• Xiaomi took a record-breaking CNY19bn ($3bn) on its platform between November 1 – 11 – an increase of CNY5bn ($780m) from 2020.

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Billy Leung

Billy is a Research Manager at FXC Intelligence. He focuses on analysing data and generating insights from card transactions and international payments. Previously, Billy worked as a director at a top 10 fintech startup listed by Deloitte for Open Banking and worked at an investment firm and a bank for payments. He has spoken at fintech conferences in the UK, US, Europe and Asia and has been interviewed by the Discovery Channel for fintech in Asia. Billy has a degree in Global Business Systems Management from City University of Hong Kong and studied at Aarhus University in Denmark and Tsinghua University in China.