Alibaba's 'Double Eleven' set for record sales as event goes global

E-commerce powerhouse Alibaba is poised to lead anticipated record sales tomorrow on "Double Eleven", the world's biggest online shopping festival, after the company extended its promotions in China to overseas merchants and shoppers.

Analysts in Hong Kong and Beijing predicted "a global shopping frenzy" that could increase Alibaba's gross merchandise volume for online sales that day to more than US$8 billion, about a 40 per cent increase from last year's promotion.

"This year, Double Eleven will expand its scope to include cross-border retail for the first time ever," Alibaba chief executive Jonathan Lu Zhaoxi said last week.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba, which was first on the mainland to launch a 24-hour online sale event in 2009, said consumers in more than 220 countries will be able to shop for products from the mainland through merchants on its international platforms, Tmall Global and AliExpress.

More widely known as "Singles Day" on the mainland, the Double Eleven event reached a milestone last November when Alibaba's gross merchandise volume grew more than 90 per cent year on year to a record high of 36.2 billion yuan (HK$45.7 billion).

That lucrative haul, worth US$5.8 billion, surpassed the combined US$2.9 billion gross merchandise volume set during the "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" online retail promotions in the United States last year, according to internet analytics firm comScore.

"We expect to see record sales volume for most of the major [mainland e-commerce] players, with Alibaba likely to reach a new peak this year," Alicia Yap, the head of China internet research at Barclays, said in a report.