
Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours - smaili
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/business/alibaba-singles-day.html
======
djaychela
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?

~~~
neves
Nowadays everything is made in China. A lot of things we buy are just
repackaged stuff that sells for 3x the original price. I've bought decent
stuff like a manual coffe grinder, or glass bottles, usb cables, or cheap
gopro accessories. You are just cutting the middle man.

~~~
lobster_johnson
Given the number of not-up-to-spec cables on Amazon (there's that Google guy
who reviews them and found a lot of them to be faulty), I would be extremely
wary of buying anything USB on Alibaba.

~~~
Milner08
Wasn't it only USB C he was finding issues with?

~~~
dmoy
Benson was focusing his efforts on usbc, presumably cus it's got a higher
propensity for damage, what with the higher voltage and all. I wouldn't be
surprised if he could find issues with non usbc stuff too though.

~~~
Scoundreller
> what with the higher voltage and all

I'd think the higher voltage would have fewer problems since there's less
current and voltage drop... covering up for less-than-spec wire gauges.

------
lunaru
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.

~~~
shalmanese
It's still a hugely significant number. $18B is $13.20USD for every man, woman
and child in China. Considering China's GDP is $8000USD, that's basically 60%
of a single day's earnings for every person in China being spent at just one
company in 12 hours.

It would be the same as everyone in the US spending $100 on the same day or
$32B in a single day (which is almost half of US online spending for a year).

~~~
adventured
US consumers spend over $32 billion every day of the year. The _average_
American adult spends $57,000 per year as of 2016. The consumer economy in the
US is around $13 trillion.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/13-trillion-us-consumer-
getti...](http://www.businessinsider.com/13-trillion-us-consumer-getting-
bigger-2016-7)

China's GDP is $11.x trillion for 2017.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(nominal\))

~~~
shalmanese
That's a bit of a misleading stat since most consumer spending is on stuff
like housing/transportation/food/utilities.

~~~
adventured
That's not misleading at all. That's how consumer spending is measured. How
would you go about explaining that water, electricity and food are not
consumption goods, but an iPad is?

~~~
pwinnski
It's misleading because nobody is buying water or electricity or paying rent
on Alibaba today for 11.11.

Comparing apples to apples would mean comparing the amount spent online in the
U.S. with a single company. Even comparing apples to pears would mean
comparing all online sales in the U.S. to Alibaba 11.11 sales.

Comparing all "consumer spending" in the U.S. with Alibaba 11.11 sales is,
well, it's misleading.

------
rahimnathwani
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
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
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
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.

------
myroon5
"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
A gallon of baijiu is a life time supply of baijiu, dependent on intake rates.

~~~
golergka
Less than 4 liters of any alcoholic drink, including pure 100% alcohol, sounds
like a month-long supply at the very best.

~~~
odiroot
I think the parent wanted to say baijiu is an acquired taste.

~~~
imron
Alternatively, if you consumed a gallon of baijiu in one sitting, it would
likely be the end of your life.

~~~
oh_sigh
You got what I was going for :)

------
yoavm
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
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.

------
praulv
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?

~~~
mcphage
I have ordered Lepin from AliExpress, which is a Lego knockoff—the sets are
the same, but the prices are 25%, and the quality is 90%.

~~~
bonzini
The prices are 25% because the designs are stolen. Not just from official LEGO
sets but also from unsuspecting hobbyists.

If you want to buy LEGO knockoffs that's fine, but there are plenty of brands
that are almost as cheap as Lepin and produce original (non-stolen) designs.

~~~
mcphage
> there are plenty of brands that are almost as cheap as Lepin and produce
> original (non-stolen) designs

Lepin does as well, just under the XingBao name.

But the joke's on the both of them—I just buy them for the pieces, not for the
set designs.

Honestly if Lego just sold big boxes of bulk technic pieces (like they do for
their normal blocks), I'd probably just buy those instead.

------
g9yuayon
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.

------
dghughes
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.

~~~
titledlee
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.

------
djsumdog
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
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-
ali...](https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/08/22/cloud-wars-alibaba-
becomes-2nd-largest-hosting-company.html)

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
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
That doesn't sound right, unless microsoft has been shrinking:
[https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-
ia...](https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/09/27/report-aws-leads-iaas-market-
alibaba-edges-past-google/)

~~~
nullnilvoid
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
Source?

~~~
taobility
their latest quarterly report I believe

------
voltagex_
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
I have not noticed, but I am interested. Where are you seeing better prices?

~~~
voltagex_
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
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)

------
quicklime
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
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-
faile...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2010/09/12/how-ebay-failed-in-
china/)

~~~
quicklime
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
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).

------
zengid
Recent talk about their JVM server architecture:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4tmr3nhZRg)

------
amauta
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.

------
dalbasal
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
> 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+o...](https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Transformation+of+Quantitative+Into+Qualitative+Changes)

 _" [...] 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."_

------
SCAQTony
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-s...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-
singles-day-racks-up-1-billion-in-sales-in-2-minutes)

~~~
anamexis
Not running transactions against a massively distributed blockchain using a
proof of work system?

~~~
SCAQTony
Hmm, So ultimately centralization is demonstrably better for transaction per
section?

~~~
Drdrdrq
Being able to trust all the machines in the network allows you to perform
better, yes. What is your point?

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

------
chinathrow
It's now way past 22B USD.

[http://www.alizila.com/](http://www.alizila.com/)

------
nsx147
What are individuals buying on Alibaba? All I see is "Contact Supplier". Are
individuals buying in bulk?

~~~
mlamat
They are buying on Aliexpress.

------
tyteen4a03
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/201711...](https://tw.news.appledaily.com/international/realtime/20171105/1235467)

------
maxisme
“Process payments with facial recognition” ??

Can anyone tell me more about that?

------
ausjke
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.

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

~~~
tw1010
I would have preferred the old one, since the NYT article hits you with a
paywall.

~~~
dang
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)

