Transactions on Tmall reached 36.2 billion RMB (around 5.3 billion USD) on November 11 (“Double 11”), China’s biggest shopping holiday of the year, within the first 1 hour and 57 minutes after sales opened on the online shopping platform according to a statement from Tmall’s owners, the Alibaba Group.

This sales record surpassed the whole-day record set in 2013, an improvement which Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong attributes to “‘wirelessness’ becoming every person’s way of life”—around 84.3 percent of the transactions are reported to have come from mobile devices.

According the statement issued through Alibaba through their news platform, Wshang.com, the most popular sales categories on Tmall were clothing, cosmetics, electronics and, appropriately, mobile phones. Maternity items, food, alcohol, and international athletics brands like Nike and Adidas also made a respectable showing.

Suning.com, the online branch of China’s major consumer electronics retailer Suning, shatter both its 2013 and 2014 records in the first 25 minutes of today’s sales. Tmall’s arch-nemesis, JD.com, also claims to have surpassed its 2013 all-day record in 1 hour and 13 minutes, only their record is reported in the numbers of orders placed and they haven’t released the actual number. Their sales total in dollars last year appeared to have been half that of Alibaba’s, which whose shopping platforms are still the stars of the show. It’s fitting since, after all, they had more or less created this monster back in 2009 by co-opting a little anti-establishment holiday known as “Single’s Day” and encouraging all the lonely hearts around the country to soothe their sorrows with shopping.

This paean to runaway consumerism has gotten big enough to spread beyond China’s borders. American cyber-retail platforms such Amazon, eyeing those sales figures last year that reached five times that of the US’s Cyber Monday, have offered shipping to China from international stores, which is one of the major disadvantages they have against Alibaba and JD. This year, Alibaba also made good on its branding of Single’s Day as the “Double 11 Global Shopping Holiday” by expanding its home electronics distribution network to 224 countries and regions around the world and accepting 18 different currencies on its online payment platform, Alipay.

This is, of course, a good time to remember the “men behind [Alibaba founder] Jack Ma”, the millions of (mostly) young, blue-collar package-processing and delivery workers, around 80 percent of whom are rural migrants, who are directly responsible for making the online shopping apparatus run; there is to be an estimated 1 billion packages to run across the country in the week following this Friday. Notwithstanding the now-mostly debunked internet rumors of monthly salaries in the 10,000s, the average reported salary of deliverymen is around 3,000 RMB per month with some opportunity to earn a little more through delivery bonuses. Generally speaking, they earn an extra 1 RMB to 1.5 RMB per package delivered, but are responsible for their own housing, food, and vehicle; some delivery companies only pay on commission, and give deliverymen 3 – 4 RMB per delivery. During Double 11, some deliverymen report working from 6am to 11pm each day to maximize the bonus system.

So sally forth and enjoy the last few hours of this unique capitalistic beast: it’s easier to do so than ever, said Zhang in Alibaba’s statement, because you can just “lie back on your bed, lean on your sofa day and night with your screen in your hand.” If that’s true, we might literally need to cut off our hands.

 

Cover image from dl.chinaso.com

Don’t forget to subscribe to TWOC for half the price before time runs out!