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Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

nytimes.com

121–130 of 177 posts

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#121
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than 4 liters of any alcoholic drink, including pure 100% alcohol, sounds like a month-long supply at the very best.

I think the parent wanted to say baijiu is an acquired taste.

Alternatively, if you consumed a gallon of baijiu in one sitting, it would likely be the end of your life.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#122

According to Bloomberg they were processing over 1/4-million transactions per second. What are they doing that Bitcoin and Ethereum can't do? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/alibaba-s...

Um, not requiring a Proof of Work / Proof of Stake?

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#123
post #95
post #66

For someone having never ordered from alibaba or aliexpres - other than briefly fleeting with drone spare parts - what exactly of use and purpose would you buy from there? I can see large scale uses for industrial machinery / commodities but what about the day to day consumer. Pointless gadgets? I briefly looked at lightinthebox for female accessories and they seemed tacky, overly glittery and just plain cheap lookin…

I have ordered Lepin from AliExpress, which is a Lego knockoff—the sets are the same, but the prices are 25%, and the quality is 90%.

The prices are 25% because the designs are stolen. Not just from official LEGO sets but also from unsuspecting hobbyists.

If you want to buy LEGO knockoffs that's fine, but there are plenty of brands that are almost as cheap as Lepin and produce original (non-stolen) designs.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#124
post #85
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't think the US is prepared for what happens when the entire world turns towards Chinese consumers and away from them.

Why would this happen? Are French markets ignored because the US exists? Nobody wants to leave billions on the table...

When you're designing an iPhone, the French market is an afterthought. The US and Chinese markets are not. In a decade or two, the Chinese and Indian markets could get so huge that the US market becomes an afterthought. Although unlikely, it's a definite possibility.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a misleading stat since most consumer spending is on stuff like housing/transportation/food/utilities.

That's not misleading at all. That's how consumer spending is measured. How would you go about explaining that water, electricity and food are not consumption goods, but an iPad is?

It's misleading here because it has nothing really to do with Alibaba or Amazon; of course there are differences in cost of living in the USA and China, the interesting figure here is online spending, or luxury spending, etc.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of a misleading stat since most consumer spending is on stuff like housing/transportation/food/utilities.

That's not misleading at all. That's how consumer spending is measured. How would you go about explaining that water, electricity and food are not consumption goods, but an iPad is?

It's misleading because nobody is buying water or electricity or paying rent on Alibaba today for 11.11.

Comparing apples to apples would mean comparing the amount spent online in the U.S. with a single company. Even comparing apples to pears would mean comparing all online sales in the U.S. to Alibaba 11.11 sales.

Comparing all "consumer spending" in the U.S. with Alibaba 11.11 sales is, well, it's misleading.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#127
post #4

Every year around this time we get the singles day news that yet another record has been broken. I'm going to guess it's going to be the same next year and the year after that since the Chinese middle class is growing (and adopting Western debt-driven spending). Not really a surprise. If anyone in the US wants to partake in the frenzy, I believe aliexpress is doing a Singles Day thing (using US timezone, so it hasn't…

It's still a hugely significant number. $18B is $13.20USD for every man, woman and child in China. Considering China's GDP is $8000USD, that's basically 60% of a single day's earnings for every person in China being spent at just one company in 12 hours. It would be the same as everyone in the US spending $100 on the same day or $32B in a single day (which is almost half of US online spending for a year).

Your numbers on US online spending are way off. US online spending was about $400B in 2016. In 2017 Amazon alone has posted about 120B in revenue (low 100s minus AWS) year to date with guidance for 55-60B in Q4 alone.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#128
A friend of mine from China was showing me an article in Chinese about the Huawei website (huge site like Amazon + Apple + FedEx) . They have 300 sub stores/warehouses just in his city they are for stock piling popular items. A man ordered something from the Huawei website at midnight and he received the package 12 minutes later.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#129

I've only bought a few things from Alibaba over the years, but most of them have turned out to be either faulty or a typical case of 'chinese manufacturer disappointment' which has led me to being reluctant to buy anything larger/more expensive. When I was in Marrakech a couple of years ago, the guy who owned the riad we stayed in referred to many things in the souks as being "China quality", and I guess that's the p…

The sellers are often negotiable and will give you discounts and photos of the actual product if you ask nicely.

Re: Alibaba hits nearly $18B in ‘Singles Day’ orders in 12 hours

#130

I've only bought a few things from Alibaba over the years, but most of them have turned out to be either faulty or a typical case of 'chinese manufacturer disappointment' which has led me to being reluctant to buy anything larger/more expensive. When I was in Marrakech a couple of years ago, the guy who owned the riad we stayed in referred to many things in the souks as being "China quality", and I guess that's the p…

I've been buying from there since 2012. Early on, I would agree with you and say the quality of a lot of the products was pretty poor, but in the last few years, I've been really happy with all my purchases.

As well as getting really cheap stuff, AE is really handy for getting hard to find things. Especially if you live in a small town as I do.

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