Employees of Tmall, an online retail website, attend to online customers during the grand sale held on Nov. 11, 2014. (Photo : Reuters )
“Double 11,” “11.11 Shopping Festival,” “11/11,” “Singles’ Day,” or whatever other names it might be called, courier companies are all set for the upcoming online sale.
Those in the logistics, transport and courier services have started preparing for the much-awaited annual sale of online goods held every Nov. 11 in the country.
Ma Junsheng, director of the State Post Bureau (SPB), said that courier companies should “upgrade and expand” their services, according to China.org.
At SPB, Ma said that they intend to deliver “better, greener and more efficient services to all people,” particularly in the rural areas. SPB targets to finish upgrading their delivery services by 2020.
SPB anticipates 500 million packages this year as a result of the November online sale.
CNN refers to the event as “a response to Valentine’s Day” and describes it as “the country's biggest annual e-commerce bonanza.”
Reuters compare the occasion to America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday. China’s Global Times hails it as “a super shopping holiday.”
Every Nov. 11, single people in the country usually give gifts to their single friends or buy something for themselves. Sometimes they do both.
How challenging could this annual shopping craze be for courier companies?
There are some 674 million Internet users in the country as of June 30, 2015, according to Internet World Stats. In 2014, there were 361.24 million online shoppers, according to Statista, an online statistics portal.
Courier companies employed an additional 200,000 people last year to hasten their delivery services. There were 50,000 new branches that opened in rural areas, reported China Daily.
In the 2014 “Double 11” craze, sales exceeded $9 billion for Alibaba. Its sales reached 35 billion yuan in 2013, according to Reuters.
“On a single day last November, more people logged on to China’s most popular e-commerce site than the entire population of Brazil,” said Serge Hoffmann and Bruno Lannes in their 2013 report on the country’s e-commerce for Bain & Company, a U.S.-based global management consulting firm.
In 2009, the year when it all started, 27 merchants participated in the event. Come 2014, online shoppers in more than 200 countries received the chance to make purchases.
Courier companies have only a few weeks left to prepare. Will they meet the expectations of the hundreds of millions of probable customers and prove the strength and efficiency of their delivery services?
The verdict can be determined next month.
