E-commerce firms look to ride themed shopping wave

After the success of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's Singles Day Festival on Nov 11, which has made its mark in the world's retail calendar, e-commerce platforms in China are now drumming up efforts to create other made-up holidays to ride the consumption boom.

Shopaholics are now glued on to June 18, a major midyear shopping gala that can help quench their thirst for discounted items before November comes around.

E-commerce giant JD, which initially coined the June 18 campaign, kicked off its 18-day-long promotions from June 1. It said sales in the first hour alone reached 5 billion yuan ($780 million), an increase of 130 percent compared with same period last year.

Smartphones, air conditioners, flat-panel televisions and refrigerators saw strong sales on the first day of the "6.18" shopping carnival, the company said, without disclosing detailed figures.

As a latecomer to the June 18 festival, Alibaba prolonged its promotions from a 24-hour extravaganza (like in the case of Nov 11) to a 20-day long campaign. The cash-flush company said it has allocated "tens of billions of yuan" to subsidize consumers when they purchase goods from 10,000 brands at home and abroad.

Coupons obtained via Alibaba's Tmall app can be redeemed when shopping in more than 70 shopping districts across the country, while a purchase over 120 yuan at RT Mart, a leading supermarket chain that Alibaba acquired earlier this year, could grant consumers a discount when they shop online.

"Clearly June 18 being a shopping period rather than a day aims to provide customers with ample time to make purchase decisions, which is also a way to set it apart from the Singles Day," said Neil Wang, president of consultancy Frost & Sullivan China.

NetEase Kaola, which planned to source $11 billion worth of goods from key overseas markets in three years, pledged to offer clients the "lowest possible prices" during the promotion that can rival that of JD or Alibaba, and promised to compensate on any price gaps should there be one.

United States e-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc plans to expand its merchandising in the Amazon Global Store, which covers top destinations among Chinese customers for cross-border shopping, including the US, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany.