Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

westiseast.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 132 posts

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

#81

Post by Abuxkur »

brianbreslin wrote: post #10

Does anyone know what they did in 2011 from a sales perspective? They are a marketplace for small retailers, so I'm curious what their margins are or commissions they take. What % of the total online commerce for that day was this? Also are these all credit card transactions or are they COD? Other forms of payments? Is taobao handling all the payment transactions? sorry for all the questions, I don't read chinese so…

they dont take commisstions, thost retailers pay the rent of online store,there are difference between stores, some stores they are is rent free which doesnt have adavanced functions,some of them need to pay rent ,and still cheap

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

#82

Post by Kayven »

OK, I will give a little introduce to you foreign guys: Taobao is a B2C/C2C E-commerce site. 11/11 is called Single's Day(all number is '1', you see?), as some song sings, "single boy single boy.single all the way!".

Taobao is one of the three biggest IT company in China. It is composed of taobao(C2C), tianmao(B2C), alibaba(B2B), yahoo China and etao(shopping search).

Moreover, you must know that on October 30, 2012, China's largest online book retailer, oldest B2C electronic business, the first landing Nasdaq China's e-commerce company, Dangdang, declared to join Tianmao.

Finally, I should say as Ma-yun said : I am very cruel, more brutal tomorrow, the day after tomorrow is very beautiful, but most of the dead tomorrow night, only those who are the real heroes to see the sun on the day after tomorrow.

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

#83

Post by Kayven »

Kayven wrote: post #82

OK, I will give a little introduce to you foreign guys: Taobao is a B2C/C2C E-commerce site. 11/11 is called Single's Day(all number is '1', you see?), as some song sings, "single boy single boy.single all the way!". Taobao is one of the three biggest IT company in China. It is composed of taobao(C2C), tianmao(B2C), alibaba(B2B), yahoo China and etao(shopping search). Moreover, you must know that on October 30, 2012,…

Sing with me together!

single boy, single boy, single all the way!

single man, single man, single all the way!

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

#85

Post by tonyxue »

For me it's not surprised for me that you guys don't know Taobao. I would like to say you can buy everything on Taobao, it's true. For many people in China, once they come up with something want to buy, they search on Taobao first. And according to my own experience, you can get what you want in 99% of the time. You can even explor many creative goods on Taobao. Actually Taobao has done this sort of big sales many times but not big as this time. Also, there's some small villages in China that most people in the village are selling their goods on Taobao and the village has more than 5 carriers carry all the stuff every day for these sellers.

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

#86

Post by shadowmint »

jessedhillon wrote: post #58
forrestthewoods wrote: post #56

Incredibly impressive. This may sound horrible and racist but when I think of China and tech I think cheap, hacky, non-reliable, lawless, and poorly done. That's obviously unfair but based on my experiences with outsourcing and the countless stories of friends it's what comes to mind. Given the advanced manufacturing that goes on in China I should know better. I can't fathom the amount of work necessary to make thing…

Two words of praise followed by a stream of acknowledged personal biases and admitted stereotypes, which are forwarded anyway. For what reason? To prove the author's own point that he/she doesn't understand the scale of a company which serves one billion people? My humble suggestion is this: next time, if you don't have a good reason to recite publicly a litany of unfounded assumptions about an entire country and peo…

While I agree with what you have to say, it's hard to support you're point of view when you're saying like that.

Be civil.

It seems (to me, at least) that you're saying it so aggressively and childishly, your comments are likely to be discarded and ignored rather than considered.

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

#87

Post by toyg »

bmelton wrote: post #14
ComputerGuru wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's web, while accessible via the "regular" internet (vs things like Iran's and NK's version of the internet) is really an internet all to its own. The average citizen in China does not use any foreign websites to do anything [citation needed]. All the services you and I consume online are replicated in China by Chinese companies. From Gmail to Yahoo!, from Facebook to twitter, from Amazon to eBay, from CNN to FO…

So, for every new Chinese startup, are there hordes of people crying about why they haven't rolled out to America? (I'm sorry, this comment isn't like me, but I couldn't resist.)

You can't really complain that Chinese companies exploit a market left untouched by culturally-ignorant Western companies. I bet if more US companies spent more time targeting the Chinese market in the right way (i.e. perfect i18n support, interfaces built with Chinese languages in mind etc), these knockoffs would get less traction.

(Of course there's always the political problem, the knockoffs are often State-sponsored etc etc, but I bet they'd suffer in face of superior competition, if they actually had real competition.)

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

#88

Post by arbuge »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #4
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.

China's web, while accessible via the "regular" internet (vs things like Iran's and NK's version of the internet) is really an internet all to its own. The average citizen in China does not use any foreign websites to do anything [citation needed]. All the services you and I consume online are replicated in China by Chinese companies. From Gmail to Yahoo!, from Facebook to twitter, from Amazon to eBay, from CNN to FO…

It's a language issue. I spent some time in a major inland Chinese city this year. 2 weeks in a city of 14m people and I didn't run into a single one that spoke sufficient English for a conversation.

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

#89

Post by johnyang »

eikaterine wrote: post #50
ozchrisb wrote: post #28

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

You're off by a factor of 10. That being said, it still seems dubious--given China's online population of 538 million people, that's $5.7 average per person spent, which is a little higher than the average per person expenditure for last year's entire Cyber Monday ($1.2 billion according to the article, and around 210 million people online in the US as of February 2011 according to an online source makes about $5.6).…

I understand you. But perhaps you are not familiar with the Chinese shopping habits and the situation now they faced with. High price good with heavy tax in the physical stores would be only sold with 50% discount in taobao online shops. If US could have such discount percentage, I believe that $5.6 could just be a small change

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

#90

Post by gbog »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #56

Incredibly impressive. This may sound horrible and racist but when I think of China and tech I think cheap, hacky, non-reliable, lawless, and poorly done. That's obviously unfair but based on my experiences with outsourcing and the countless stories of friends it's what comes to mind. Given the advanced manufacturing that goes on in China I should know better. I can't fathom the amount of work necessary to make thing…

Last year I joined a big Chinese startup and, after eight years in China, I discovered something: the best hackers in China are not those you would find in places haunted by foreigners, they would not be working for foreign companies, they don't necessarily like to speak English, even if they follow closely what happens outside. Under these circumstances, many people naturally mistake the cheap and shallow folks they shake hands with in bars for the normal Chinese geek, and conclude it's not that impressive. It's an observation bias. There are many top level Chinese nerds, they are very busy making sites like taobao work.
Post reply on HN