Singles Day, the prefab shopping holiday created by Alibaba in 2009, saw just 5% sales growth over 2021, experts polled by CNN estimated, compared to a 15.5% gain in 2021, as the inflation-fueled ecommerce slowdown and fresh COVID-19 lockdowns in China acted as a drag on results.
Boding well for the holiday spend here, the U.S. was the top seller of goods during Alibaba’s Singles Day 2020, which raked in $116 billion combined on Alibaba and JD.com. Alibaba itself reported $75.28 billion yuan in GMV, while JD.com said its Singles Day GMV was $40.72 billion. Sales from U.S. retailers topped $5 billion.
Alibaba is changing up its fast-growing AliExpress marketplace to attract merchant sellers from nations besides China, a direct challenge to Amazon’s international marketplace, according to the Financial Times. The “local to global” program will initially admit sellers from Russia, Turkey, Italy and Spain, expanding as it goes.
Shanghai-based ecommerce marketplace Pinduoduo, China’s third-largest after Alibaba and JD.com, is seeking to raise up to $1 billion in a U.S. IPO on an exchange to be named later, less than three years after its founding, See how the company differentiates itself from other Chinese marketplaces.