Perspectives
In the West, November 11th isn’t much of a holiday, although it may soon be celebrated among gamers as the day that Skyrim was released. But in China, the day is a celebration of singledom, the anti-Valentine’s day, chosen because the date is 11/11. This year, Alibaba’s Tmall and some other online retailers have planned pretty significant sales for today, and it seems pretty clear that Chinese customers have taken notice.
We’ve heard from the folks at Alibaba that in just the first hour of the sale, Tmall has taken in 439,000,000 RMB (about $68 million). Moreover, this was the hour between 12:00 and 1:00 AM, meaning that it was only the nighthawks who were up late making their sale-priced purchases.