11 ms·

Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

208 points by smaili 9y ago

djsumdog 9y ago
With Alibaba launching their own hosting services as well, where do they stand at scale compared to Amazon? I realize Alibaba is mostly targeted inward to China, unlike Amazon that has some international markets, but are they a contender when it comes to global sales (and possibly China facing hosting?)
- jaxondu 9y ago
  Aliyun has been around for sometimes, and is now rebrand as Alibaba Cloud and expanding beyond China. It is competing with AWS, Google Cloud, Azure etc. And this August report says Alibaba Cloud has surpassed Digital Ocean to be number 2 in hosting. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-alibaba-becomes-2nd-largest-hosting-company.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-ali... Singles Day sales is a few times bigger than Black Friday or anything Amazon has. Kind of strange to ask if Alibaba Cloud can scale as AWS.
  - nullnilvoid 9y ago
    Actually, Aliyun built data centers all over the world, including the US, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America etc. It is the second largest IAAS, second to only AWS (yes it is bigger and growing faster than Google and Microsoft in IAAS).
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      That doesn't sound right, unless microsoft has been shrinking: https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-iaas-market-alibaba-edges-past-google/ https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-ia...
      - nullnilvoid 9y ago
        The data in your link is for 2016. It's the end of 2017 now. Alibaba Cloud is growing definitely much faster than Microsoft (126% vs 61%) and Google and bigger than Google. It is very close to Microsoft in terms of revenue if not bigger right now.
        boundlessdreamz 9y ago
        Source?
        taobility 9y ago
        their latest quarterly report I believe
        jpatokal 9y ago
        Would you have that data then? Also note that neither Google nor Microsoft break out their cloud computing revenues, making comparisons difficult, although you can figure out upper bounds by the nearest business unit.
        joshuamorton 9y ago
        Right, but MS was more than 2x the size at the end of last year, so Alibaba would need to continue that >100% growth, and MS would need to not grow at all. I doubt that's the case.
- adventured 9y ago
  According to Bloomberg, Alibaba hit $675 million in sales for their cloud services for fiscal 2016. So they're likely comparable, or a bit larger than, Google presently (~1/2 the size of Azure and far behind AWS). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/microsoft-and-google-turn-to-ai-to-catch-amazon-in-the-cloud https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/microsoft...
dang 9y ago
Url changed from https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits-nearly-18-billion-in-singles-day-orders-in-12-hours-already-surpassing-2016-sales/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits-nearly-18-bil....
- tw1010 9y ago
  I would have preferred the old one, since the NYT article hits you with a paywall.
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    An unofficial workaround: go to archive.is and paste the link. Non-paywalled: http://archive.is/waNw6 http://archive.is/waNw6
  - dang 9y ago
    Paywalls with workarounds are explicitly allowed on HN [1] and NYT submissions are as standard as you can get here. Other things being equal, we'll prefer a non-paywalled URL as in [2] from earlier today, but in the present case there was a clear quality difference. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936
  - kercker 9y ago
    Clear the cache of NYT, and you can view another few articles.
  - leowinterde 9y ago
    Just use the mobile page without paywall https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singles-day.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singl...
lunaru 9y ago
Every year around this time we get the singles day news that yet another record has been broken. I'm going to guess it's going to be the same next year and the year after that since the Chinese middle class is growing (and adopting Western debt-driven spending). Not really a surprise. If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy, I believe aliexpress is doing a Singles Day thing (using US timezone, so it hasn't started yet as of this writing), but be careful with the shipping timelines on the products. I've had situations where items didn't arrive until weeks later and I had already forgotten that I'd bought anything.
- rrhd 9y ago
  > If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy because we should totally turn veterans day into a ridiculous spend a lot day.
- taurath 9y ago
  I really don't think the US is prepared for what happens when the entire world turns towards Chinese consumers and away from them.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    At what percentage of the global economy do you think the US will become uninteresting? (it's currently between ¼ and ⅕ of the global economy)
    - crdoconnor 9y ago
      Once China reverses its mercantilist policy that % will plummet and the US will suffer very high levels of inflation. That will probably happen once corruption in China becomes manageable, the Chinese stop moving their assets offshore and the US has no industrial technological advantage any more (i.e. once China can make equivalently good airplanes and microprocessors).
      - justrobert 9y ago
zengid 9y ago
Recent talk about their JVM server architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg
rahimnathwani 9y ago
Many people stayed up late last night to take advantage of limited-time deals (e.g. ones that were only available for the first minute after midnight) or deals that had only limited stock. Some friends of ours chose today to go to Ikea, figuring they'd be free from the usual massive crowds, as people would be at home doing online shopping, or sleeping in after staying up late last night. It turned out they were right.
- nullnilvoid 9y ago
  Back when I was living in China, I wished China had the Black Friday as in the US because of discounts and promotions. Now I am back in the US, I wish the US had the Single's Day as in China. What a Change!
  - tunetine 9y ago
    I feel like the deals in the U.S. have really gone downhill or maybe they were never deals to begin with. The internet has made everything pretty transparent at least.
    - adventured 9y ago
      Deals in the US vary in direct proportion to the state of the economy (or a given retailer's plight). In 2009-2011 for example, the deals were frequently tremendous due to bad economic condition of consumers. Now the US has a U6 unemployment rate near 20 year lows and has added $45 trillion to its household wealth number in the last seven years, while incomes have also been rising modestly well the last several years. The need for substantial deals to move most merchandise is vastly reduced accordingly.
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voltagex_ 9y ago
Has anyone else noticed over the last 6 months or so that AliExpress isn't necessarily the cheapest anymore? Same thing happened with Amazon a few years ago.
- geomark 9y ago
  I have not noticed, but I am interested. Where are you seeing better prices?
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    Banggood mainly - I've had better luck with them than Gearbest. OzBargain.com.au also seems to like Lightinthebox, Rosegal and Zapals. I do wonder if there's a way to go "one level up" - who supplies all these Chinese stores?
    - geomark 9y ago
      I think you have to go there yourself. Watch some of the videos by Bunnie Huang to see how. For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc
    - duckwheat 9y ago
      Is it just me, or is GearBest carrying fewer items by far than they were a year ago?
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    I also found the following aggregators/search engines: https://en.pandacheck.com/ https://en.pandacheck.com/ https://sealsmile.com/ https://sealsmile.com/ http://chinaprices.us/ http://chinaprices.us/
- GFischer 9y ago
  What's the cheapest now?
djaychela 9y ago
I've only bought a few things from Alibaba over the years, but most of them have turned out to be either faulty or a typical case of 'chinese manufacturer disappointment' which has led me to being reluctant to buy anything larger/more expensive. When I was in Marrakech a couple of years ago, the guy who owned the riad we stayed in referred to many things in the souks as being "China quality", and I guess that's the problem. I don't expect something for nothing, but it's so hard to tell if you're going to get something that's going to be as I would expect (i.e. functional, accurately manufaturered), or as I've experienced (borderline functional, poorly manufactured or badly designed). The best purchase was a secondhand (rare) motherboard for a client's laptop, sadly! It's a real pity as I'm sure if there was a way of really knowing the quality of what you were getting (other than getting samples, which I've done and had issues with several of them) then it would be a great place to buy either for personal consumption or for a business opportunity. At times like today I spend a while browsing and see things I would be interested in if I wasn't concerned they would be 'China quality'. Am I missing something here? Is there a better way of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Or is it just a case of a lot of hit and miss and hopefully building a relationship with a decent supplier at some point?
- Thorncorona 9y ago
  Of course if you're buying the cheapest stuff manufacturers are going to cut corners. When you buy more expensive stuff that is well made, like Apple products which are also manufactured in China but much more expensive, of course you're going to get something that's good. Your problem is to not go for the lowest denominator and generalize.
- nullnilvoid 9y ago
  I have had some experience on Taobao and Tmall. Taobao is for C2C (customers to customers) while Tmall is b2c (business to customers). Tmall has better quality in general (the brands sell directly to customers). For Taobao, the quality varies greatly. For me, I always read the ratings and reviews, in particular negative reviews very carefully. If the percentage of negative reviews is high, I would avoid that product. So far, I have had good experience. I bought some really high quality goods at very low prices. Similar goods would cost a lot more on Amazon.
myroon5 9y ago
"One offer, from the Chongqing-based online alcohol brand Jiang Xiao Bai, allowed 33 fast-moving customers to make a single payment of 11,111 yuan, or $1,673, for a lifetime supply of a grain liquor known as baijiu"
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  A gallon of baijiu is a life time supply of baijiu, dependent on intake rates.
  - rrhd 9y ago
    nah, just gotta open a bar that serves nothing but baijiu.
  - golergka 9y ago
    Less than 4 liters of any alcoholic drink, including pure 100% alcohol, sounds like a month-long supply at the very best.
    - odiroot 9y ago
      I think the parent wanted to say baijiu is an acquired taste.
      - imron 9y ago
        Alternatively, if you consumed a gallon of baijiu in one sitting, it would likely be the end of your life.
        oh_sigh 9y ago
        You got what I was going for :)
    - Scoundreller 9y ago
      > pure 100% alcohol = free auto-gas supplement. Or home heating.
dalbasal 9y ago
As a European that takes in a good bit of american business reporting (doesn't everyone?), I'm kind of amused and surprised at how China's rhymes. The common sense understanding of a consumer driven economy, the fantastical scale. I sort of imagine that to a caricature of an old americana businessman, this sale is a significant event. The quantity of the chinese market (even per capita, by the satisfyingly physical measure of "biggest sale ever" and it's easily visualised as a mountain of packaged goods), is a quality of its own^. At least, that is what my caricatured character believes intrinsically. ^This is a made up quote attributed to Stalin. I love how american sounding it is, in retrospect.
- B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
  > is a quality of its own^ > quote attributed to Stalin Actually, that was comrade Hegel at the source of the idea, but the marxists did run a lot with it, mostly into the ground ... https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+of+Quantitative+Into+Qualitative+Changes https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+o... "[...] a basic law of materialist dialectics, according to which a change in the quality of an object occurs when the accumulation of quantitative changes reaches a certain limit."
Dowwie 9y ago
It looks like Harbor Freight's made in China, sold from USA products are now cheaper than those made and sold from China.
maxisme 9y ago
“Process payments with facial recognition” ?? Can anyone tell me more about that?
quicklime 9y ago
The Alibaba Group's revenue for the entire 2017 was ~$23B (see https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA), so making $18B in a single day sounds unbelievable. Is one of these numbers incorrect?
- adventured 9y ago
  They're both correct. Alibaba makes almost all of its money from advertising. They're frequently incorrectly portrayed as a traditional retailer, akin to Amazon (which itself is increasingly not a retailer). They're a retailer in the sense that eBay is. They own no merchandise, they sell no merchandise. They're a platform that other people sell on/through. They don't primarily make money from listing fees though (as eBay does), in their case it's from ads and equivalent. Alibaba has a lot more in common with Google than Walmart (which is also why their profit margins are so high, versus eg JD.com). Incredibly, when Alibaba was founded, China's GDP was ~1/11th what it is today. Which is another way of saying, they were dramatically poorer just 18 years ago. That factor combined with non-existent online micro charging capabilities circa 1999, no smartphones, etc. meant that Jack Ma couldn't easily charge traditional listing/selling fees to be on their platform. So they went with a mostly free platform that made money via ads. That is also a big reason eBay failed in China despite being there semi-early: (story from 2010 about what happened to eBay in China) https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed-in-china/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-faile...
  - quicklime 9y ago
    I see, so it looks like what's being measured here is "gross merchandise volume", which is the total value of orders placed on their platform. Whereas the revenue in their financial statements is the money they make from advertising and their other businesses.
    - adventured 9y ago
      That's right. eBay's gross merchandise volume for example was $84 billion in fiscal 2016 (their revenue take was $9 billion). Every year the media makes a big deal about Alibaba's merchandise volume. It's a cute soundbite, and it's certainly a large number, but it's not how they make money at all. Their own revenue can technically grow far faster or slower than the merchandise volume (I would expect them to outperform their merchandise volume growth rate in the coming years, as they increase ad rates as China's economy scales the value ladder & GDP per capita keeps climbing, while their manufacturing and exports grow very modestly if at all).
tyteen4a03 9y ago
There was a report in Taiwan that merchants on TMall would fake transactions worth up to 1.5bil RMB. https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/20171105/1235467 https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/201711...
praulv 9y ago
For someone having never ordered from alibaba or aliexpres - other than briefly fleeting with drone spare parts - what exactly of use and purpose would you buy from there? I can see large scale uses for industrial machinery / commodities but what about the day to day consumer. Pointless gadgets? I briefly looked at lightinthebox for female accessories and they seemed tacky, overly glittery and just plain cheap looking. It did make me wonder about the premium Western consumers pay to line corporate profits for chinese factory products. Ignoring secure, specialised electronics factories, most day to day fashion accessories in Sachs 5th Av, Macy's etc will be quality controlled chinese/indian products. Is it possible to get hold of these on aliexpress?
- sokoloff 9y ago
  I order 3D printer parts, physical hardware (fasteners, typically), electronics components (Arduino work-a-likes and shields), small tchotchkes for kids [birthday party giveaways], cheap computer accessories and cables (USB chargers, USB cables, USB-C adapters, audio adapters and cables, etc). That's all aliexpress. Alibaba is more industrial, negotiate for pricing; Aliexpress is a pure marketplace. With the subsidized shipping, I can often get something for <$2 that would be $8 on Amazon and $25 at Staples/BestBuy.
  - sokoloff 9y ago
    As I re-read my comment above, it seems hyperbolic, so I went to check the actual data on the last time I tried to buy something at Staples. I needed a 1/8" stereo mini to 2 RCA male cable. Staples: $15.59 - https://www.staples.com/Staples-7-3-5mm-to-Dual-RCA-Y-Adapter-Black/product_2093675 https://www.staples.com/Staples-7-3-5mm-to-Dual-RCA-Y-Adapte... BestBuy: $9.99 - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-6-3-5mm-mini-to-rca-stereo-audio-cable-black/4408001.p https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-6-3-5mm-mini-to-rca-st... Amazon: $4.76 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IE7Z628 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IE7Z628 Aliexpress: $0.56 / $0.82 - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-Mini-Plug-3-5mm-Plug-Jack-to-2RCA-Male-Stereo-Audio-Cable-Splitter-July17-2/32821726406.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-Mini-Plug-3-5mm-Plug-Jack-...
    - 9y ago
yoavm 9y ago
My dad just looked at the last three orders he had on AliExpress, all from more than a month ago. They appear now on the website as if they have 30%-50% discount, but the end price is exactly the same, for all of them. I'm not sure how much of a sale it really is...
- PakG1 9y ago
  Purchasing inside of China, it's different, I think? All the items I bought, I can clearly see what the original price is. I remember last year buying a clotheswasher. Two months after Singles Day, checked the price and confirmed that it did indeed have the higher original price.
- jacksonsabey 9y ago
  this always happens anytime there's a sale on aliexpress, most of time it actually costs more when it's "on sale"
chinathrow 9y ago
It's now way past 22B USD. http://www.alizila.com/ http://www.alizila.com/
ausjke 9y ago
the thing amazed me is that the way they deal with the high traffic,in real time, for money transactions, not many companies can do that level of technical stack.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nsx147 9y ago
What are individuals buying on Alibaba? All I see is "Contact Supplier". Are individuals buying in bulk?
- mlamat 9y ago
  They are buying on Aliexpress.
SCAQTony 9y ago
According to Bloomberg they were processing over 1/4-million transactions per second. What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-singles-day-racks-up-1-billion-in-sales-in-2-minutes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-s...
- anamexis 9y ago
  Not running transactions against a massively distributed blockchain using a proof of work system?
  - SCAQTony 9y ago
    Hmm, So ultimately centralization is demonstrably better for transaction per section?
    - Drdrdrq 9y ago
      Being able to trust all the machines in the network allows you to perform better, yes. What is your point?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- imron 9y ago
  > What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do? Processing over 1/4-million transactions per second.
- onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
  Um, not requiring a Proof of Work / Proof of Stake?
  - SCAQTony 9y ago
    I guess the proof of stake is the credit card validation and the charges and fees are settled a day or two later?
dghughes 9y ago
A friend of mine from China was showing me an article in Chinese about the Huawei website (huge site like Amazon + Apple + FedEx) . They have 300 sub stores/warehouses just in his city they are for stock piling popular items. A man ordered something from the Huawei website at midnight and he received the package 12 minutes later.
- itwy 9y ago
  As per the legend.
- titledlee 9y ago
  THIS. I feel people outside of China dont understand how efficient sales in China is. I lived in Beijing during its boom form 2008 - 2010ish and it was CRAZY. My friend literally went on Taobao, messaged a seller for the latest macbook speced out decked out, talked down the price and half an hour later a guy came during our lunch break (we were in international school) and waited at our school gate where he took out the ordered macbook pro and showed him that everything was brand new unbox therapied that shit to us and my buddy paid in cash with options to pay using card. I was like "woah shit" . The most impressive thing was he did not have to pay until he was satisfied with what he was being showed. I enjoyed living in China, and am still waiting here in Canada till the day something like this is possible.
amauta 9y ago
Man, western ppl are missing out on not so cheap but high quality clothes in TaoBao. My wife wears these winter jackets so elegant ppl in usa compliment her on the quality and style. All made in china. Thing is you gotta know chinese to know what to look for in taobao.
g9yuayon 9y ago
Most of the comments here focus on the business aspects of US/China retailing. I'd like to remind techies here that Alibaba has become a tech powerhouse as they learned how to deal with ever increasing traffic. Their work on infrastructure has been phenomenal. It's not a joke to handle up to 45 million database transactions per second, or 256K payments per second. Few US companies could do it without breaking a sweat. Check out their work on JStorm, Flink, messaging queue, container, JVM, ML platform, and databases. Alas, tech innovations came from real and challenging business scenarios. It's like diamonds are forged by extreme heat and pressure. Now look at Silicon Valley, how many companies can claim tech achievement similar to that of Alibaba, except the same ol' Google, Facebook, and Amazon? I don't think it's due to lack of tech talent. Instead, it's due to lack of business scenarios at scale for most of the companies.

208 points by smaili 9y ago

With Alibaba launching their own hosting services as well, where do they stand at scale compared to Amazon? I realize Alibaba is mostly targeted inward to China, unlike Amazon that has some international markets, but are they a contender when it comes to global sales (and possibly China facing hosting?)

jaxondu 9y ago
Aliyun has been around for sometimes, and is now rebrand as Alibaba Cloud and expanding beyond China. It is competing with AWS, Google Cloud, Azure etc. And this August report says Alibaba Cloud has surpassed Digital Ocean to be number 2 in hosting. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-alibaba-becomes-2nd-largest-hosting-company.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-ali... Singles Day sales is a few times bigger than Black Friday or anything Amazon has. Kind of strange to ask if Alibaba Cloud can scale as AWS.
- nullnilvoid 9y ago
  Actually, Aliyun built data centers all over the world, including the US, Europe, Southeast Asia, South America etc. It is the second largest IAAS, second to only AWS (yes it is bigger and growing faster than Google and Microsoft in IAAS).
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    That doesn't sound right, unless microsoft has been shrinking: https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-iaas-market-alibaba-edges-past-google/ https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-ia...
    - nullnilvoid 9y ago
      The data in your link is for 2016. It's the end of 2017 now. Alibaba Cloud is growing definitely much faster than Microsoft (126% vs 61%) and Google and bigger than Google. It is very close to Microsoft in terms of revenue if not bigger right now.
      - boundlessdreamz 9y ago
        Source?
        taobility 9y ago
        their latest quarterly report I believe
      - jpatokal 9y ago
        Would you have that data then? Also note that neither Google nor Microsoft break out their cloud computing revenues, making comparisons difficult, although you can figure out upper bounds by the nearest business unit.
      - joshuamorton 9y ago
        Right, but MS was more than 2x the size at the end of last year, so Alibaba would need to continue that >100% growth, and MS would need to not grow at all. I doubt that's the case.
adventured 9y ago
According to Bloomberg, Alibaba hit $675 million in sales for their cloud services for fiscal 2016. So they're likely comparable, or a bit larger than, Google presently (~1/2 the size of Azure and far behind AWS). https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/microsoft-and-google-turn-to-ai-to-catch-amazon-in-the-cloud https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/microsoft...

dang 9y ago

Url changed from https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits-nearly-18-billion-in-singles-day-orders-in-12-hours-already-surpassing-2016-sales/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/10/alibaba-hits-nearly-18-bil....

tw1010 9y ago
I would have preferred the old one, since the NYT article hits you with a paywall.
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  An unofficial workaround: go to archive.is and paste the link. Non-paywalled: http://archive.is/waNw6 http://archive.is/waNw6
- dang 9y ago
  Paywalls with workarounds are explicitly allowed on HN [1] and NYT submissions are as standard as you can get here. Other things being equal, we'll prefer a non-paywalled URL as in [2] from earlier today, but in the present case there was a clear quality difference. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15672936
- kercker 9y ago
  Clear the cache of NYT, and you can view another few articles.
- leowinterde 9y ago
  Just use the mobile page without paywall https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singles-day.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singl...

lunaru 9y ago

Every year around this time we get the singles day news that yet another record has been broken. I'm going to guess it's going to be the same next year and the year after that since the Chinese middle class is growing (and adopting Western debt-driven spending). Not really a surprise. If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy, I believe aliexpress is doing a Singles Day thing (using US timezone, so it hasn't started yet as of this writing), but be careful with the shipping timelines on the products. I've had situations where items didn't arrive until weeks later and I had already forgotten that I'd bought anything.

rrhd 9y ago
> If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy because we should totally turn veterans day into a ridiculous spend a lot day.
taurath 9y ago
I really don't think the US is prepared for what happens when the entire world turns towards Chinese consumers and away from them.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  At what percentage of the global economy do you think the US will become uninteresting? (it's currently between ¼ and ⅕ of the global economy)
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    Once China reverses its mercantilist policy that % will plummet and the US will suffer very high levels of inflation. That will probably happen once corruption in China becomes manageable, the Chinese stop moving their assets offshore and the US has no industrial technological advantage any more (i.e. once China can make equivalently good airplanes and microprocessors).
    - justrobert 9y ago

zengid 9y ago

Recent talk about their JVM server architecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg

rahimnathwani 9y ago

Many people stayed up late last night to take advantage of limited-time deals (e.g. ones that were only available for the first minute after midnight) or deals that had only limited stock. Some friends of ours chose today to go to Ikea, figuring they'd be free from the usual massive crowds, as people would be at home doing online shopping, or sleeping in after staying up late last night. It turned out they were right.

nullnilvoid 9y ago
Back when I was living in China, I wished China had the Black Friday as in the US because of discounts and promotions. Now I am back in the US, I wish the US had the Single's Day as in China. What a Change!
- tunetine 9y ago
  I feel like the deals in the U.S. have really gone downhill or maybe they were never deals to begin with. The internet has made everything pretty transparent at least.
  - adventured 9y ago
    Deals in the US vary in direct proportion to the state of the economy (or a given retailer's plight). In 2009-2011 for example, the deals were frequently tremendous due to bad economic condition of consumers. Now the US has a U6 unemployment rate near 20 year lows and has added $45 trillion to its household wealth number in the last seven years, while incomes have also been rising modestly well the last several years. The need for substantial deals to move most merchandise is vastly reduced accordingly.

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voltagex_ 9y ago

Has anyone else noticed over the last 6 months or so that AliExpress isn't necessarily the cheapest anymore? Same thing happened with Amazon a few years ago.

geomark 9y ago
I have not noticed, but I am interested. Where are you seeing better prices?
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Banggood mainly - I've had better luck with them than Gearbest. OzBargain.com.au also seems to like Lightinthebox, Rosegal and Zapals. I do wonder if there's a way to go "one level up" - who supplies all these Chinese stores?
  - geomark 9y ago
    I think you have to go there yourself. Watch some of the videos by Bunnie Huang to see how. For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXNv_rNGcc
  - duckwheat 9y ago
    Is it just me, or is GearBest carrying fewer items by far than they were a year ago?
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  I also found the following aggregators/search engines: https://en.pandacheck.com/ https://en.pandacheck.com/ https://sealsmile.com/ https://sealsmile.com/ http://chinaprices.us/ http://chinaprices.us/
GFischer 9y ago
What's the cheapest now?

djaychela 9y ago

I've only bought a few things from Alibaba over the years, but most of them have turned out to be either faulty or a typical case of 'chinese manufacturer disappointment' which has led me to being reluctant to buy anything larger/more expensive. When I was in Marrakech a couple of years ago, the guy who owned the riad we stayed in referred to many things in the souks as being "China quality", and I guess that's the problem. I don't expect something for nothing, but it's so hard to tell if you're going to get something that's going to be as I would expect (i.e. functional, accurately manufaturered), or as I've experienced (borderline functional, poorly manufactured or badly designed). The best purchase was a secondhand (rare) motherboard for a client's laptop, sadly! It's a real pity as I'm sure if there was a way of really knowing the quality of what you were getting (other than getting samples, which I've done and had issues with several of them) then it would be a great place to buy either for personal consumption or for a business opportunity. At times like today I spend a while browsing and see things I would be interested in if I wasn't concerned they would be 'China quality'. Am I missing something here? Is there a better way of sorting the wheat from the chaff? Or is it just a case of a lot of hit and miss and hopefully building a relationship with a decent supplier at some point?

Thorncorona 9y ago
Of course if you're buying the cheapest stuff manufacturers are going to cut corners. When you buy more expensive stuff that is well made, like Apple products which are also manufactured in China but much more expensive, of course you're going to get something that's good. Your problem is to not go for the lowest denominator and generalize.
nullnilvoid 9y ago
I have had some experience on Taobao and Tmall. Taobao is for C2C (customers to customers) while Tmall is b2c (business to customers). Tmall has better quality in general (the brands sell directly to customers). For Taobao, the quality varies greatly. For me, I always read the ratings and reviews, in particular negative reviews very carefully. If the percentage of negative reviews is high, I would avoid that product. So far, I have had good experience. I bought some really high quality goods at very low prices. Similar goods would cost a lot more on Amazon.

myroon5 9y ago

"One offer, from the Chongqing-based online alcohol brand Jiang Xiao Bai, allowed 33 fast-moving customers to make a single payment of 11,111 yuan, or $1,673, for a lifetime supply of a grain liquor known as baijiu"

oh_sigh 9y ago
A gallon of baijiu is a life time supply of baijiu, dependent on intake rates.
- rrhd 9y ago
  nah, just gotta open a bar that serves nothing but baijiu.
- golergka 9y ago
  Less than 4 liters of any alcoholic drink, including pure 100% alcohol, sounds like a month-long supply at the very best.
  - odiroot 9y ago
    I think the parent wanted to say baijiu is an acquired taste.
    - imron 9y ago
      Alternatively, if you consumed a gallon of baijiu in one sitting, it would likely be the end of your life.
      - oh_sigh 9y ago
        You got what I was going for :)
  - Scoundreller 9y ago
    > pure 100% alcohol = free auto-gas supplement. Or home heating.

dalbasal 9y ago

As a European that takes in a good bit of american business reporting (doesn't everyone?), I'm kind of amused and surprised at how China's rhymes. The common sense understanding of a consumer driven economy, the fantastical scale. I sort of imagine that to a caricature of an old americana businessman, this sale is a significant event. The quantity of the chinese market (even per capita, by the satisfyingly physical measure of "biggest sale ever" and it's easily visualised as a mountain of packaged goods), is a quality of its own^. At least, that is what my caricatured character believes intrinsically. ^This is a made up quote attributed to Stalin. I love how american sounding it is, in retrospect.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
> is a quality of its own^ > quote attributed to Stalin Actually, that was comrade Hegel at the source of the idea, but the marxists did run a lot with it, mostly into the ground ... https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+of+Quantitative+Into+Qualitative+Changes https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+o... "[...] a basic law of materialist dialectics, according to which a change in the quality of an object occurs when the accumulation of quantitative changes reaches a certain limit."

Dowwie 9y ago

It looks like Harbor Freight's made in China, sold from USA products are now cheaper than those made and sold from China.

maxisme 9y ago

“Process payments with facial recognition” ?? Can anyone tell me more about that?

quicklime 9y ago

The Alibaba Group's revenue for the entire 2017 was ~$23B (see https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BABA/financials?p=BABA), so making $18B in a single day sounds unbelievable. Is one of these numbers incorrect?

adventured 9y ago
They're both correct. Alibaba makes almost all of its money from advertising. They're frequently incorrectly portrayed as a traditional retailer, akin to Amazon (which itself is increasingly not a retailer). They're a retailer in the sense that eBay is. They own no merchandise, they sell no merchandise. They're a platform that other people sell on/through. They don't primarily make money from listing fees though (as eBay does), in their case it's from ads and equivalent. Alibaba has a lot more in common with Google than Walmart (which is also why their profit margins are so high, versus eg JD.com). Incredibly, when Alibaba was founded, China's GDP was ~1/11th what it is today. Which is another way of saying, they were dramatically poorer just 18 years ago. That factor combined with non-existent online micro charging capabilities circa 1999, no smartphones, etc. meant that Jack Ma couldn't easily charge traditional listing/selling fees to be on their platform. So they went with a mostly free platform that made money via ads. That is also a big reason eBay failed in China despite being there semi-early: (story from 2010 about what happened to eBay in China) https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed-in-china/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-faile...
- quicklime 9y ago
  I see, so it looks like what's being measured here is "gross merchandise volume", which is the total value of orders placed on their platform. Whereas the revenue in their financial statements is the money they make from advertising and their other businesses.
  - adventured 9y ago
    That's right. eBay's gross merchandise volume for example was $84 billion in fiscal 2016 (their revenue take was $9 billion). Every year the media makes a big deal about Alibaba's merchandise volume. It's a cute soundbite, and it's certainly a large number, but it's not how they make money at all. Their own revenue can technically grow far faster or slower than the merchandise volume (I would expect them to outperform their merchandise volume growth rate in the coming years, as they increase ad rates as China's economy scales the value ladder & GDP per capita keeps climbing, while their manufacturing and exports grow very modestly if at all).

tyteen4a03 9y ago

There was a report in Taiwan that merchants on TMall would fake transactions worth up to 1.5bil RMB. https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/20171105/1235467 https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/201711...

praulv 9y ago

For someone having never ordered from alibaba or aliexpres - other than briefly fleeting with drone spare parts - what exactly of use and purpose would you buy from there? I can see large scale uses for industrial machinery / commodities but what about the day to day consumer. Pointless gadgets? I briefly looked at lightinthebox for female accessories and they seemed tacky, overly glittery and just plain cheap looking. It did make me wonder about the premium Western consumers pay to line corporate profits for chinese factory products. Ignoring secure, specialised electronics factories, most day to day fashion accessories in Sachs 5th Av, Macy's etc will be quality controlled chinese/indian products. Is it possible to get hold of these on aliexpress?

sokoloff 9y ago
I order 3D printer parts, physical hardware (fasteners, typically), electronics components (Arduino work-a-likes and shields), small tchotchkes for kids [birthday party giveaways], cheap computer accessories and cables (USB chargers, USB cables, USB-C adapters, audio adapters and cables, etc). That's all aliexpress. Alibaba is more industrial, negotiate for pricing; Aliexpress is a pure marketplace. With the subsidized shipping, I can often get something for <$2 that would be $8 on Amazon and $25 at Staples/BestBuy.
- sokoloff 9y ago
  As I re-read my comment above, it seems hyperbolic, so I went to check the actual data on the last time I tried to buy something at Staples. I needed a 1/8" stereo mini to 2 RCA male cable. Staples: $15.59 - https://www.staples.com/Staples-7-3-5mm-to-Dual-RCA-Y-Adapter-Black/product_2093675 https://www.staples.com/Staples-7-3-5mm-to-Dual-RCA-Y-Adapte... BestBuy: $9.99 - https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-6-3-5mm-mini-to-rca-stereo-audio-cable-black/4408001.p https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-6-3-5mm-mini-to-rca-st... Amazon: $4.76 - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IE7Z628 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IE7Z628 Aliexpress: $0.56 / $0.82 - https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-Mini-Plug-3-5mm-Plug-Jack-to-2RCA-Male-Stereo-Audio-Cable-Splitter-July17-2/32821726406.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1-Mini-Plug-3-5mm-Plug-Jack-...
  - 9y ago

yoavm 9y ago

My dad just looked at the last three orders he had on AliExpress, all from more than a month ago. They appear now on the website as if they have 30%-50% discount, but the end price is exactly the same, for all of them. I'm not sure how much of a sale it really is...

PakG1 9y ago
Purchasing inside of China, it's different, I think? All the items I bought, I can clearly see what the original price is. I remember last year buying a clotheswasher. Two months after Singles Day, checked the price and confirmed that it did indeed have the higher original price.
jacksonsabey 9y ago
this always happens anytime there's a sale on aliexpress, most of time it actually costs more when it's "on sale"

chinathrow 9y ago

It's now way past 22B USD. http://www.alizila.com/ http://www.alizila.com/

ausjke 9y ago

the thing amazed me is that the way they deal with the high traffic,in real time, for money transactions, not many companies can do that level of technical stack.

deleted 9y ago

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nsx147 9y ago

What are individuals buying on Alibaba? All I see is "Contact Supplier". Are individuals buying in bulk?

mlamat 9y ago
They are buying on Aliexpress.

SCAQTony 9y ago

According to Bloomberg they were processing over 1/4-million transactions per second. What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-singles-day-racks-up-1-billion-in-sales-in-2-minutes https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-s...

anamexis 9y ago
Not running transactions against a massively distributed blockchain using a proof of work system?
- SCAQTony 9y ago
  Hmm, So ultimately centralization is demonstrably better for transaction per section?
  - Drdrdrq 9y ago
    Being able to trust all the machines in the network allows you to perform better, yes. What is your point?
deleted 9y ago
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imron 9y ago
> What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do? Processing over 1/4-million transactions per second.
onlyrealcuzzo 9y ago
Um, not requiring a Proof of Work / Proof of Stake?
- SCAQTony 9y ago
  I guess the proof of stake is the credit card validation and the charges and fees are settled a day or two later?

dghughes 9y ago

A friend of mine from China was showing me an article in Chinese about the Huawei website (huge site like Amazon + Apple + FedEx) . They have 300 sub stores/warehouses just in his city they are for stock piling popular items. A man ordered something from the Huawei website at midnight and he received the package 12 minutes later.

itwy 9y ago
As per the legend.
titledlee 9y ago
THIS. I feel people outside of China dont understand how efficient sales in China is. I lived in Beijing during its boom form 2008 - 2010ish and it was CRAZY. My friend literally went on Taobao, messaged a seller for the latest macbook speced out decked out, talked down the price and half an hour later a guy came during our lunch break (we were in international school) and waited at our school gate where he took out the ordered macbook pro and showed him that everything was brand new unbox therapied that shit to us and my buddy paid in cash with options to pay using card. I was like "woah shit" . The most impressive thing was he did not have to pay until he was satisfied with what he was being showed. I enjoyed living in China, and am still waiting here in Canada till the day something like this is possible.

amauta 9y ago

Man, western ppl are missing out on not so cheap but high quality clothes in TaoBao. My wife wears these winter jackets so elegant ppl in usa compliment her on the quality and style. All made in china. Thing is you gotta know chinese to know what to look for in taobao.

g9yuayon 9y ago

Most of the comments here focus on the business aspects of US/China retailing. I'd like to remind techies here that Alibaba has become a tech powerhouse as they learned how to deal with ever increasing traffic. Their work on infrastructure has been phenomenal. It's not a joke to handle up to 45 million database transactions per second, or 256K payments per second. Few US companies could do it without breaking a sweat. Check out their work on JStorm, Flink, messaging queue, container, JVM, ML platform, and databases. Alas, tech innovations came from real and challenging business scenarios. It's like diamonds are forged by extreme heat and pressure. Now look at Silicon Valley, how many companies can claim tech achievement similar to that of Alibaba, except the same ol' Google, Facebook, and Amazon? I don't think it's due to lack of tech talent. Instead, it's due to lack of business scenarios at scale for most of the companies.