Taobao.com breaks record for online sales in a day - $3.1 billion USD

Post by grecy » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:46 AM UTC

westiseast wrote: post #17

anothermachine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting to read your comment and dmoy's. On the one hand, compared to Amazon.com, Taobao sounds like a horrible shopping experience. On the other hand, compared to a shuk (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is), it is a vast improvement. Context is everything.

with all due respect to Tsagadai, I disagree. Taobao is an excellent shopping experience and I've never been ripped off there (perhaps my wife is an expert taobao-ista, which helps). (1) Shops are absolutely crap scared of a bad review. Shoppers avoid bad reviews like the plague, and there's normally so much competition that you can always find an alternative. The 1 time we gave a bad review, we had a call from the s…

Post by jianshen » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:48 AM UTC

wilfra wrote: post #19

"1hr after the promotion opened, the first package was received." I think that is the most interesting part. It's pretty incredibile how efficient taobao is in such an inefficient country.

Post by roy_x » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:49 AM UTC

westiseast wrote: post #8

portman wrote: post #3

I don't speak or read Chinese, but my guess is that not all of these sales were online, that for many (most?) the payment occurred in retail stores.

nope - taobao is a 100% online store. It's a single shop, where individuals or big brands can setup stores. AFAIK they have no physical outlets at all, and everything goes through their own custom payment portal called Zhi Fu Bao (支付报). That's why it's so incredible!

Post by roy_x » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 5:57 AM UTC

Tsagadai wrote: post #7

ghshephard wrote: post #2

Particularly fascinating, that as a long time daily (hourly?) reader of HN I've never even heard of Taobao before today.

Taobao is fantastic for buying anything China makes (which is almost everything). It is part auction house, part business-to-business sales. There are even quite a few services to get around the language barrier. A word of caution, if something goes wrong your money is almost certainly lost. Sometimes the firm that you bought it from has folded (I've had this happen in the time it took to deliver the order) to the se…

Post by westiseast » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 6:01 AM UTC

ozchrisb wrote: post #28

Is their any information that confirms this. $3.1 billion is almost .5% of China's GDP. This sounds wrong.