Alibaba Group employees at the company's Xixi headquarters, where 11.11 activities are taking place. Photo credit: Alibaba Group

This week, the first check-out window of Alibaba Group’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival ended, seeing millions of people press “buy” on pre-sale items in their carts.

Alizila has spent the last five days reporting in-depth on the latest retail trends, technology innovations and consumer behavior insights to emerge so far during the world’s largest retail event.

Also this week, Alibaba Cloud’s Apsara conference took place in Hangzhou, where our reporter at the scene shared the most exciting tech updates and launches.

We’ve curated the best of these news items below.

AliExpress Delivers Far and Wide For 11.11

Alibaba’s international marketplace AliExpress kicked off its 11.11 sale on Tuesday. This year, international customers can get products at the 11.11 price directly from Chinese and international suppliers at an accelerated speed.

With the 15 warehouses and some 8,000 pickup lockers set up across Europe by Alibaba’s logistics arm Cainiao Network, European consumers will receive 11.11 orders placed through AliExpress in five days.

Customers living in ten European cities, including in Paris, will be able to get same-day delivery.

AliExpress and Cainiao pledged to deliver orders to American customers in five days and to Korean customers in three days, backed by over 3 million square meters of cross-border warehouse space and the 240 charter cargo aircraft dispatched from China monthly.

Alibaba Embraces Metaverse with Extended Reality, 3D and Virtual Influencers During 11.11

Business units across Alibaba’s ecosystem are using extended reality (XR), virtual influencers and artificial reality (AR) to transform online shopping.

Alibaba’s research institute DAMO Academy, in collaboration with its licensing platform Alifish, rolled out an XR-powered marketplace on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms Tmall and Taobao on Monday that allows consumers to shop for merchandise in their customizable avatars. 

Consumers can browse in virtual stores from over 30 internationally recognized media franchises, including Sanrio’s iconic Hello Kitty, and Hollywood’s franchise Minions.

Read on here

A Roadmap for Australian SMEs Selling Wellness Products to Chinese Consumers

Chinese consumers do far more research and ask more questions than shoppers in other markets, Sydney-based business owner Jessica Bragdon has discovered.

She and her husband Paul Davidson are the founders of eco-friendly cleaner brand Koala Eco, which has been available in the Chinese market on Alibaba’s B2C platform Tmall since April.

The duo believe a strong 11.11 campaign could propel Koala Eco much further in the country.

“Moving forward, we plan to not only roll out all our products in China, but we’re also open to doing more market research to find out if there are specific products that we could develop for the Chinese market,” said Bragdon.

Read more about their journey here

Alibaba’s Michael Evans on 2022’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

In this episode of Alicast, we’re joined by Michael Evans, President of Alibaba Group to talk about the latest e-commerce trends coming out of China and how global brands can best leverage 11.11 to build lasting connections with consumers.

“11.11 represents a significant opportunity for merchants to reach the most valuable consumers on our platforms,” said Evans, who is responsible for leading and executing Alibaba’s international strategy for globalizing the company and expanding its businesses outside of China.

Around 40,000 merchants from outside China are participating in this year’s 11.11 via Alibaba’s cross-border marketplace Tmall Global.

Listen to the full interview here

LIVE BLOG: Alibaba’s 2022 11.11 Global Shopping Festival

What do virtual idols, lucky draws and electric vehicles all have in common? They’ve all been featured in posts on Alizila’s 11.11 Live Blog.

Stay up to date with the action here

Q&A: Alibaba’s DAMO Academy Unveils Free Artificial Intelligence Platform

DAMO Academy unveiled a free hosting platform for hundreds of ready-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) models on Thursday.

The tech community, dubbed ModelScope, allows developers and researchers to download and customize pre-trained AI models, making it easier for universities and smaller companies to use AI for their research and businesses.

Alizila caught up with Zhou Jingren, Vice President of Alibaba DAMO Academy, to learn how these models change AI.

Read more here

Alibaba Cloud Launches Cloud-Powered Laptop that Powers Remote Working

Alibaba Cloud unveiled an ultra-thin cloud-powered laptop dubbed Wuying Cloudbook on Wednesday.

The device is the latest addition to its Wuying cloud computer family, and is part of its drive to make the benefits of cloud computing accessible.

“Wuying Architecture is a powerful extension and expansion of the workplace,” said Jiang Jiangwei, general manager of Infrastructure Products at Alibaba Cloud.

It frees users from storage limitations by allowing them to run workloads on the cloud without downloading and installing software on local devices. Users can run multiple operating systems simultaneously on Wuying Cloudbook, including Windows, Linux, or Android.

Get the full scoop here