Alibaba pledges ‘largest ever’ Singles’ Day as shopping festival marks 10th anniversary, goes international

E-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding expects to achieve a record 1 billion orders in 24 hours during Singles’ Day on November 11, as the company pulls together its entire retail ecosystem in China and overseas to participate in the world’s largest online shopping festival this year.

The festival will see the participation of more merchants and consumers outside China to mark the event’s 10th anniversary, as Southeast Asian subsidiary Lazada Group will jointly hold for the first time Singles’ Day promotions across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

“When we established the November 11 shopping festival in 2009, we were seeking a way to expand our business,” Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang Yong said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday. “Today, the festival is not only the most important shopping event for Chinese consumers, but it also has looped in substantial [number of] consumers from overseas to participate.”

Zhang said this year’s edition of Singles’ Day will be “bigger and more successful than in previous years”, following the initiatives taken by Alibaba under its New Retail strategy, which seeks to integrate the online and offline shopping experiences for consumers across a number of products and services.

Apart from online shopping platforms Taobao Marketplace, Tmall and Lazada, the Singles’ Day activities of Alibaba next month will include food delivery service Ele.me, food and lifestyle services arm Koubei, supermarket chain Hema, hypermart operator RT-Mart and the company’s other offline retail units.