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To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba'

To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba's operating margins are approx. 30%.

robryan 7y ago
I assume a lot of that Alibaba volume is them collecting smaller commission amounts on a larger number of transactions? Would be interesting to know what the gross profit margin is on their revenue figure for the day.
- adventured 7y ago
  Alibaba is an advertising platform. They're not a retailer like Amazon. The one day sales event is gross merchandise volume, not Alibaba's actual revenue. The parent comment is comparing apples and oranges. eBay for example did $94b in gross merchandise volume in 2018, their revenue was $10.7b.
justicezyx 7y ago
Their model is different though. Alibaba has almost no self held sales. While Amzn only include profit from 3rd party as revenue, not sales from 3rd party (AFAIK).
endorphone 7y ago
Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.
- canada_dry 7y ago
  Yet Alibaba's operating margins are 15X (31% vs 2%) that of Amazon.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Revenue is nothing but bragging rights. Profit is what matters.
  - mgfist 7y ago
    That's not true. Road to profitability and market cap are what matter. Hypothetical: One business is making $100million in revenue, is losing $20million a year but has enough market cap to grow 10-100x and is spending most of its money on R&D/marketing, while a second business makes $1million in profit on $10million in revenue, but you've maxed out your growth and there's no more market cap, I'd rather be business 1, as you're on the road to potentially make hundreds of millions in profit later on. i.e. I'd rather be Amazon some years back when they weren't profitable than some mom and pop online business that makes enough to pay the mortgage.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Market cap is just the number of outstanding shares * price.. It says nothing about the quality of the business. Your explanation doesn’t make sense in that regard. Even now, looking at the results, Amazon retail is not a great profitable business. It’s still low margin. No one could have predicted AWS - the true success story. And look no further than YC backed companies. Have any of them become profitable? Even the one company that has gone public - Dropbox - isn’t looking to good these days.
      - crumpets 7y ago
        OP meant total addressable market (TAM).
        mgfist 7y ago
        Yes my b.
      - mgfist 7y ago
        Yes I meant TAM as the other person commented. Further more, even if amazon retail still isn't profitable (I haven't checked the numbers) AWS still wouldn't have spawned without it. Think of it as a pivot, even though they still kept amazon retail. I'm not really sure what your YC comment has to do with things.
- mcintyre1994 7y ago
  Am I missing something or are Alibaba seriously making more than half their annual sales in one single day?
  - mattnewton 7y ago
    It looks like the one-day number is gross (ie, no costs subtracted), the other is net profit.
  - ABeeSea 7y ago
    Alibaba’s revenue is (primarily) only the fees and commission they charge their sellers. They did $30B of gross sales on that day but probably only collected $1-3B in reportable revenue. Amazon does the same thing for it’s third-party sellers; only the fees and commission make it to Amazon’s top line revenue number for seller sales.
  - semperdark 7y ago
    They allow you to order in advance for discounts, and book all the sales on one day as a PR exercise.
DataWorker 7y ago
If you believe their numbers. Many do not.
- akban 7y ago
  Really? And who are these 'many' that do not? You and your cat perhaps?
steve19 7y ago
The sales "day", at least for the West, is a week (maybe two?) when everything is on sale but the transactions are held as pending until the sale day. It is very annoying because the discounts are usually 1-2% (again as a westerner, may well be different for Asia) and it means you might have to wait a week or two for the product to ship. I have asked stores if they can bill me full price and ship immediately and they say no. So its really a marketing con to consolidate one or two weeks worth of sales into one day and then proclaim they had such a huge salsa day. Imagine if Amazon billed two weeks of sales right on Black Friday. The numbers would be insane.

To put this in some global perspective... Alibaba's one day sales event "Singles Day" last November grossed almost half that amount (i.e. $30B). Note: Alibaba's operating margins are approx. 30%.

robryan 7y ago

I assume a lot of that Alibaba volume is them collecting smaller commission amounts on a larger number of transactions? Would be interesting to know what the gross profit margin is on their revenue figure for the day.

adventured 7y ago
Alibaba is an advertising platform. They're not a retailer like Amazon. The one day sales event is gross merchandise volume, not Alibaba's actual revenue. The parent comment is comparing apples and oranges. eBay for example did $94b in gross merchandise volume in 2018, their revenue was $10.7b.

justicezyx 7y ago

Their model is different though. Alibaba has almost no self held sales. While Amzn only include profit from 3rd party as revenue, not sales from 3rd party (AFAIK).

endorphone 7y ago

Yet Alibaba's revenue for all of 2018 was $55B USD, compared to $232B USD for Amazon. I see that one day sale thing appear in many mentions of Amazon and it might be a little...misleading.

canada_dry 7y ago
Yet Alibaba's operating margins are 15X (31% vs 2%) that of Amazon.
scarface74 7y ago
Revenue is nothing but bragging rights. Profit is what matters.
- mgfist 7y ago
  That's not true. Road to profitability and market cap are what matter. Hypothetical: One business is making $100million in revenue, is losing $20million a year but has enough market cap to grow 10-100x and is spending most of its money on R&D/marketing, while a second business makes $1million in profit on $10million in revenue, but you've maxed out your growth and there's no more market cap, I'd rather be business 1, as you're on the road to potentially make hundreds of millions in profit later on. i.e. I'd rather be Amazon some years back when they weren't profitable than some mom and pop online business that makes enough to pay the mortgage.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Market cap is just the number of outstanding shares * price.. It says nothing about the quality of the business. Your explanation doesn’t make sense in that regard. Even now, looking at the results, Amazon retail is not a great profitable business. It’s still low margin. No one could have predicted AWS - the true success story. And look no further than YC backed companies. Have any of them become profitable? Even the one company that has gone public - Dropbox - isn’t looking to good these days.
    - crumpets 7y ago
      OP meant total addressable market (TAM).
      - mgfist 7y ago
        Yes my b.
    - mgfist 7y ago
      Yes I meant TAM as the other person commented. Further more, even if amazon retail still isn't profitable (I haven't checked the numbers) AWS still wouldn't have spawned without it. Think of it as a pivot, even though they still kept amazon retail. I'm not really sure what your YC comment has to do with things.
mcintyre1994 7y ago
Am I missing something or are Alibaba seriously making more than half their annual sales in one single day?
- mattnewton 7y ago
  It looks like the one-day number is gross (ie, no costs subtracted), the other is net profit.
- ABeeSea 7y ago
  Alibaba’s revenue is (primarily) only the fees and commission they charge their sellers. They did $30B of gross sales on that day but probably only collected $1-3B in reportable revenue. Amazon does the same thing for it’s third-party sellers; only the fees and commission make it to Amazon’s top line revenue number for seller sales.
- semperdark 7y ago
  They allow you to order in advance for discounts, and book all the sales on one day as a PR exercise.

DataWorker 7y ago

If you believe their numbers. Many do not.

akban 7y ago
Really? And who are these 'many' that do not? You and your cat perhaps?

steve19 7y ago

The sales "day", at least for the West, is a week (maybe two?) when everything is on sale but the transactions are held as pending until the sale day. It is very annoying because the discounts are usually 1-2% (again as a westerner, may well be different for Asia) and it means you might have to wait a week or two for the product to ship. I have asked stores if they can bill me full price and ship immediately and they say no. So its really a marketing con to consolidate one or two weeks worth of sales into one day and then proclaim they had such a huge salsa day. Imagine if Amazon billed two weeks of sales right on Black Friday. The numbers would be insane.