The Alibaba News Roundup is a weekly digest of events and happenings across the company. This week, we look at what Alibaba Group’s ecosystem has in store for the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival season and what differentiates this year’s event from previous years. Also covered are different initiatives from the group’s units to help small to medium-sized U.S. companies in both B2C and B2B sectors thrive globally in a new business environment.
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Global Shopping Festival Kicks Off with Presales; This Year Features Two Shopping Windows
On Wednesday, Alibaba kicked off the 2020 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. Now in its 12th year, the event will be bigger than ever, with more than 250,000 brands and 2 million newly debuting products. The company said global brand recovery will be a key focus of this year’s event, positioning the world’s largest shopping day as a catalyst for their recovery from the pandemic. An extension of the usual sales period by Alibaba’s B2C platforms, Tmall and Taobao, is expected to help achieve this goal. Presales started on Oct. 21. A first sales window will open on Nov. 1-3 ahead, giving SMEs more exposures and opportunities to reach customers, while customers have more time to browse and snatch up deals before Nov. 11, when the second sales window opens. Click here to read more about what to expect from this year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.
US Pitch Fest Winners Gear Up for Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival
The nine winners of Alibaba’s Go Global 11.11 Pitch Fest are gearing up for product launches at the upcoming shopping festival. The program was a low-cost, low-risk opportunity, high-profile way for U.S. medium-sized brands to leverage the Chinese market and fine-tune their strategies. To read more about their experiences, click here.
Cainiao Ramps Up Global Logistics Infrastructure for 11.11
Cainiao Network is gearing up for a huge surge in demand for parcel delivery during the Global Shopping Festival – the biggest such event in the world. But 11.11 is not just about numbers and buying products. Shorter delivery time is what completes a pleasant shopping experience, and that’s where Cainiao comes in. To handle a large number of orders, the logistics company is ramping up delivery operations, pre-stocking popular items in domestic and international warehouses and is adopting more artificial-intelligence technologies. For deliveries outside China, over 700 chartered flights will support about 90% of Cainiao’s parcel deliveries. That will shave 60% off delivery time for more than half of them, due to an algorithm that calculates and consolidates parcels directed to the same destination regardless of the location of their departure. For China-bound packages, Cainiao will also add more flights and long-haul cargo ships to meet the rising demand for imported goods. The delivery-related upgrades come after Cainiao announced plans in June to ramp up investments to expand its global logistics network and slash delivery times over the next three years, with its goal to deliver all parcels within 24 hours in China and 72 hours globally.
Intime Mall Gears Up for 11.11 with One-Hour Delivery Push
Alibaba-owned department-store chain Intime said this week that speedy delivery is one of its focuses for this year’s shopping festival. To ensure that, the company’s renewed digital infrastructure and analytics are key to helping drive enhanced efficiency and growth, according to Intime CEO Chen Xiaodong. Up to 80% of Intime’s branches nationwide are now ready to accommodate one-hour deliveries, even with the number of parcels distributed during 11.11 expected to double from last year’s event. Intime’s promotions will also cover more restaurants and local-service merchants this year, including offering free deals on spa treatments, indoor play centers for kids, and even pastries and boba tea at its food courts. As of September, Intime’s digital loyalty club members have doubled year over year to nearly 20 million people.
Alibaba.com to Help US Manufacturers Get Digital with New ‘Digitization Sprint’ Program
“Digitization is no longer a nice-to-have, but a must-have for companies in every industry to bridge from surviving to thriving in the next era of business.” With this in mind, Alibaba.com has announced a new program dubbed Digitization Sprint for U.S. Manufacturers to accelerate the digitization of manufacturers in the U.S., arming them with the right tools to thrive in the $23.9 trillion global B2B e-commerce market. Learn more about our new initiative and a survey on U.S. B2B small and medium businesses, released by Alibaba.com this week.
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