China’s Singles’ Day festival: record-breaking online sales

China’s online wine and spirits retailers have reported strong rises in sales during the 2015 version of China’s Singles’ Day shopping festival.

Retailer Yesmywine doubled its Singles’ Day sales on its Tmall.com outlet to hit CNY 40.5m (£4.2m) during the first 24 hours of its ‘72-hour sales campaign’.

Wine and spirit retailers Sichuan 1919 and jiuxian.com also reported record sales figures.

China’s Singles' Day, also known as Guang Gun Jie, is celebrated on the 11 November. It has become the world’s largest online shopping festival led by major online retailers including Tmall.com and JD.com.

Online retailers tend to give exceptional discounts on this day to attract consumers’ attention.

The Tmall.com sales figure, according to Yesmywine, only accounts for a part of its total campaign sales across all its online and offline platforms.

It told local media that its official website, www.yesmywine.com, also ‘saw significant increase in sales’, though the final figures are yet to be released.

‘We aim to make a profit,’ WANG Yang, executive vice-president of Yesmywine told local media before the launch of the campaign. Wang stressed that ‘unlike some brands’, Yesmywine ‘will not use extremely low price to increase our sales’.

Wines priced at or below CNY200 (£20) per bottle were among the top sellers, according to Yesmywine’s official site.

Besides everyday wines, part of Yesmywine’s fine wine portfolio, including Bordeaux Grand Crus such as Chateau Haut-Brion 2010 and Chateau Calon-Ségur 2006, were also sold at a discounted price for a limited amount.

Though some of them were sold over CNY1000, ‘the sales have been surprisingly heated,’ said Yesmywine.

The wine retailer, which ranked 4th among Tmall’s alcohol beverage stores during the Singles’ Day campaign, earlier this year joined forces with Chinese vintage baijiu distributor Googut Wine & Spirits in May 2015, in an attempt to extend its portfolio to Chinese baijiu.

Sichuan 1919’s Tmall shop was crowned the top alcohol beverage seller during Singles’ Day, making CNY157m on its wines and spirits portfolio, doubling its CNY 72m record in 2014.

Jiuxian.com with its spirits-main line-up came second in revenue, but attracted the most buyers (125,148 people).

Chinese movie star Zhao Wei’s Chateau Monlot flagship store came 12th in the list, whereas Changyu’s official Tmall shop ranked 13th, according to Tmall.com’s official figures.

After breaking last year’s sales record in 12 hours, Tmall.com hit CNY 91.2bn sales by the end of the 24-hour online shopping festival, a 59.7% increase from last year’s campaign. 69% of the total transaction was completed via mobile devices, according to Tmall.com.

JD.com also announced a 130% year-on-year increase in the number of orders and 140% in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) during the one-day campaign. 74% of the total orders, according to the online direct sales company, were ‘placed via mobile platforms’, including WeChat and Mobile QQ.