
Alibaba's Singles' Day sales exceed predictions at $9.3B - theklub
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29999289
======
redwood
That's one site doing 3x the combined total sites' 2013 Cyber Monday.

Pivotal moment as the center of gravity of the world's consumer economy shifts
to China.

The fervent dive into consumerism is incredible. Anyone in China seeing a
counter culture emerging against this? Or is it too early

~~~
melling
Yes, we're in the Century of China. It's amazing how far China has come in the
past 15 years. Next person on the moon will be from China? 20,000 miles of
high-speed rail? Largest subway system in the world. From 0 to the biggest in
20 years. The largest everything...

~~~
maxerickson
Why 20 years?

A reasonable zero for modern China seems to me to be the end of the Cultural
Revolution (I went and touched up my history to phrase it that way, but my
notion was that the early 80s provide a better starting point than 1994 or
2000).

I'm curious what you (and others) think, not trying to have a hair splitting
argument about it.

~~~
melling
Sorry, I was referring to the Shanghai Subway. It was built over 20 years and
is bigger than the NYC Subway. I checked and Beijing is actually bigger and
started much earlier, however, and carries about a billion more people.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_Subway)

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Metro)

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Subway)

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w1ntermute
_Singles ' Day sales that reveal a lot_:
[http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_188894...](http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-11/09/content_18889439.htm)

~~~
spydum
sooo, not exactly related to Alibaba, but they sure do take this Singles Day
thing seriously?! that is a heck of a sales promo stunt

~~~
untog
Having seen the videos of Walmarts opening on Black Friday I wouldn't say the
US is much different.

~~~
georgemcbay
We wear a lot more clothes to the sales here, which is a good thing because we
are in far worse shape.

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adventured
Here's an interesting fact that a lot of people don't seem to realize about
Alibaba: they're an advertising company. They generate over 50% of their
revenue from ads.

~~~
irollboozers
Makes you think about the sheer amount of traffic. Incredible.

~~~
adventured
It's an interesting concept they put together. It's akin to the problem Google
posed for Microsoft, in that there was no price to undercut as they did with
Netscape (since Google's search is obviously free). That's how Alibaba was
able to essentially eliminate eBay from the China market (eBay purchased a
leading market / platform play, and had a meaningful position in China, prior
to Alibaba's lift-off); eBay was charging fees for listings, mirroring their
approach in the US, and Alibaba didn't. How do you compete against that? You
pretty much have to be another Chinese juggernaut like Tencent or Baidu to
even attempt it.

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westiseast
I blogged about this the last two years - it's an incredible technical
challenge as well as the huge sales side of things. Amazing

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mrfusion
I must be misunderstanding Alibaba. I thought it was related to buying
wholesale goods to resell?

~~~
smtddr
Alibaba.com is geared towards wholesale, aliexpress.com is geared more for
single item(s) purchases. I've been buying stuff from Aliexpress for years.

Both Aliexpress.com and Alibaba.com belong to the same company; i.e. my login
works on both websites.

Kinda like Myhabit.com's login is the same as your Amazon.com's login.

~~~
Pxtl
I'm curious, what payment method do you use? I was looking at buying something
on Aliexpress but the lack of Paypal or Google Payments turned me off.

~~~
smtddr
I use my debitcard. I trust them. Based on their wiki[1], they look like a
huge company(e.g. Amazon) that doesn't necessarily have incentive to be
randomly ripping people off via CC fraud.

That said, word of caution though

\- Unless you want to pay insane shipping, your order won't arrive in the USA
for like 4 to 6 weeks.

\- Clothing sizes are tricky. I usually go one size bigger than my US/UK size.
For my wife who wears S or XS, I have to get her medium - sometimes even
that's too small.

\- Clothing quality varies especially for lady's clothing. Nearly always it
looks fantastic, but if you dare put it in the washing machine it will
disintegrate. Wash by hand or dryclean.

\- Order electronics at your own peril. That's just rolling dice. I've seen
Android phones & tablets from them. When I have a few extra hundred lying
around, I'm gonna try getting a laptop - and I fully expect to get junk. But
I've also seen orders fulfilled surprisingly well.

\- Customer Support doesn't usually have english as first language.

\- So far, out of like 20+ orders. They've gotten maybe 2 completely wrong...
or I misread the product-details _(some of those pages can be tricky)_

1\.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alibaba_Group)

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kev6168
This seems to be Alibaba's github page.
[https://github.com/alibaba](https://github.com/alibaba)

Among the projects Tengine is the powerful web server (based on Nginx) used at
Tmall.com and Taobao.com.

~~~
samstave
Was looking at Tengine as well, it seems pretty awesome. Anyone use it in
production (that is not Alibaba?) and have comments on it?

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Igglyboo
I wonder if Amazon is worried.

~~~
innguest
They should be. Amazon makes no profits and operates in dollars. Those are two
things you don't want to get caught doing right now.

~~~
eclipxe
Amazon's profits are redeployed into investments.

~~~
pessimizer
That's Amazon's PR, yes.

[http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-
press/franklin-...](http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-
press/franklin-foer-confuses-amazons-subsidies-from-the-govvernment-with-
profits)

"The people who say that this is due to the fact that they are investing in
building up their business are showing their ignorance. Reinvesting and
profits are two separate issues. Profits reflect the difference between
revenues and costs on current business operations. These can all be used for
investment in expansion (as opposed to being paid out as dividends and share
buybacks), but they should still show up as profits. Amazon doesn't show
profits or at least not much. This means that it costs them as much to run
their business as they are getting from customers in revenue. That is not
viable as a long-term model even if they are always expanding."

\-----

edit:

[from a comment on that page]

Title: "Nothing Depreciates In Less Than 5 Years"

"Sorry folks, there is no way that would keep Jeff Bezos out of jail where
their greater investment would explain the lack of accounting profit. There is
nothing that depreciates in less than 5 years (20 percent annual rate) and
most items at a considerably faster rate. This means the difference in re-
investment rates could at best knock off a small share of Amazon's profits if
they are not committing fraud.

"The math on this is simple. Assume Amazon's 'true' profits are rising 15
percent a year. Assume that they re-invest 100 percent of their profits, as
oppose to the 30-40 percent that would be more typical. The higher
depreciation over the last five years in this case would account for just 47
percent of Amazon's current year profits. The number would fall sharply if we
assume the true rate of profit growth is 20 percent or higher and that some of
Amazon's investments depreciate in more than 5 years."

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tszming
You can get an authenticated Gap's Shirt (from their official tmall) for
around $15-20 USD (after discount/coupons, currently $40-50 on gap.com), so
the deal is not bad even you compare with the coming US holidays discounts.

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merrua
The aliexpress sales are really good this year. Around 40% of users on mobile
[https://twitter.com/Alizila](https://twitter.com/Alizila)

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joelthelion
I wonder to which extent these predictions are willingly underestimated in
order to make the headlines?

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foobarqux
Were there any good deals for Westerners?

~~~
icebraining
Aliexpress has plenty of stuff today with 50-90% discount. Like an MP3 player
for $1.6 - with free shipping!

~~~
notastartup
that breaks on arrival

