Upon us once again is China’s annual Double 11 Shopping Festival, and while post-COVID retail recovery is strong across the country, here in Nanjing it’s our own home-grown businesses that are picking up the most interest among this year’s bargains.
Double 11 (双十一), also known as Singles Day in China, falls on 11 November. But the bargains start earlier, much earlier. This year’s pre-sales in fact began earlier than ever before, on 21 October.
No wonder that a representative of online mall, Jingdong, was able to tell reporters that sales records have already been set, even as the day from which the shopping festival draws its name is not until next week.
Part of the reason for the explosive growth lies in the efforts made earlier in the year to switch from offline to online. In the food and beverage sector, many of Nanjing’s best-known brands are seeing their online sales rocket during this year’s shopping bonanza.
A spokesperson for Nanjing Osmanthus Duck (桂花鸭) confirmed the company has this year vigorously developed its online platforms. As a result, their 2020 Double 11 sales volume is already almost 10 times more than usual, reported Nanjing Daily.
Elsewhere, one of the biggest gains this year has been made by Weigang Dairy (卫岗), which initiated its sales on both Jingdong and Tmall very early. With incentives that can amount to as much as a 20 percent discount, Weigang’s Tmall sales on 1 November were 50 times that of the same period last year.
The surge in popularity of local products is not only down to Nanjingers’ sense of pride or the will to save money. Increasingly it is also reflective of an increase in the quality of such and consumers no longer blindly focusing on imported products.
A Mr. Li, speaking with reporters, said, “On 1 November, I bought Zhichun Grass Feed Fresh Milk from Weigang online. I thought it was no worse than foreign dairy products, and it’s our local brand. Now foreign milk sources are not necessarily reassuring”.
At the national level, the Double 11 Festival is expected to underpin the overall growth in consumer and retail that is predicted for China in the last quarter of this year. During September, offline retail sales had returned to their same level as last year.
Locally, the Nanjing Municipal Bureau of statistics recently revealed financial data for the city during the first three quarters of the year, whereby Nanjing’s GDP was ¥1.060161 trillion, representing a year-on-year increase of 3.3 percent.
Without doubt a positive outlook, but all eyes remain on Double 11. Referring to Taobao Live, provider of credit ratings, commentary and research, Fitch Ratings, yesterday commented, “Top rated streaming accounts had over 100 million viewers and recorded ¥7 billion of pre-sales on 21 October alone, equivalent to 1 percent of total online sales in September”.
As people in China and beyond seek to snap up a bargain this Double 11 Festival, there could hardly be a better time to sample the best which Nanjing has to offer, at the kind of rock-bottom prices that come but once a year.
