By Dai Tian (chinadaily.com.cn)
Wuzhen, Zhejiang, China, Nov. 20, 2014, Jack Ma Yun, lead founder and executive chairman of China’s Alibaba Group, said at the World Internet Conference (WIC) in Wuzhen that he credits the success of his company to holding true to a vision of the future.
Ma said Alibaba positioned itself as an e-commerce enabler 15 yearts ago , anticipating that China’s small businesses would play an important role in the economy and choosing to partner with them.
The WIC, has gathered China’s Internet tycoons and government officials together with foreign cyberspace titans. On hand are participants from Apple, Facebook, Cisco, and China’s top three Internet companies, search engine Baidu, Alibaba and instant messaging provider Tencent.
The conference, which began Nov 19 and continues until Friday, carries the slogan “An interconnected world shared and governed by all.” The event is the first of its kind in China.
When discussing the online sale of fake goods, Ma said only the Internet can solve the problem of counterfeits.
“After some research among fake goods producers in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, you may find that they are now afraid to sell their products on Taobao, as we can track them down easily and report to the police,” he said.
When asked about alleged competition between Alibaba and Amazon, Ma said that there is a difference in management philosophy between the East and the West.
“In the East, Taoism stresses the connection between humans and nature. Confucianism focuses on the connection between humans and society, and Buddhism seeks a connection between humans and their inner heart,” said Ma.
Jack Ma also shared his idea of cross-border e-commerce business. When talking about Alibaba’s successful model, Ma said, “the ‘three WIN’ mode is most important, that is to say, customers, partners and us. When customers win, partners win, we win, that’s a real win.”
In this year’s Singles’ Day, Alibaba kept its promise. This year is the first time Alibaba chose to launch its Singles’ Day campaign on both its domestic and overseas platforms.
Here are seven important figures to mark Alibaba Singles’ Day shopping spree this year.
217
By expanding globally with the participation of AliExpress and Tmall Global, customers from 217 countries and regions outside the Chinese mainland joined the shopping spree, with China’s Hong Kong region, the United States and Russia claiming the top three overseas buyer areas.
A screenshot of Aliexpress on Nov 11, 2014. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]
57.1 billion yuan
Online sales on Alibaba’s Tmall.com, Taobao.com and its overseas outlets, such as AliExpress, topped 57.1 billion yuan($9.34 billion) on Tuesday, beating Tmall and Taobao’s combined 2013 Singles’ Day sales of 36.2 billion yuan.
The big screen shows sales volume during the Nov 11 Singles’ Day shopping spree at Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou city, East China’s Zhejiang province, on Nov 11 2014. [Photo/Provided to chinadaily.com.cn]
42.6%
With the rapid development of China’s mobile Internet, 42.6 percent of sales were made through mobile devices, witha minor gap to PCs.
278.5 million
There were 278.5 million logistics orders generated during the 2014 event.
Workers at a sorting center of an express company in Hefei, capital of East China’s Anhui province, on Nov 11 2014, of the “Singles Day” holiday that has become China’s busiest online shopping day. [Photo/Xinhua]
More than 27,000
This year, more than 27,000 brands and merchants participated in the event, including Costco, Muji, Desigual, ASOS,and The North Face.
Two minutes
Within two minutes after the start of the online shopping spree, the gross merchandise volume exceeded 1 billionyuan.
2.85 million
At peak, 2.85 million transactions were processed per minute by Alipay.