China's consumer economy is growing rapidly, and more and more e-commerce companies are joining every year to celebrate the Double 11 festival. Brick and mortar retail outlets are even capitalizing on the festivities with plans to create a "shopping carnival" type atmosphere.
Online shopping has grown hugely popular in China of late, and Nov. 11 every year has become something of a shopping holiday.
It was created in 2009 by the Alibaba Group, as a way to promote the launch of their T-mall business. According to their COO, the reason why they chose November was because "people need to buy a lot to get ready for winter, we have 'Golden Week' in October, and 'Christmas' in December'; but there is nothing happening in November."
Alibaba’s Taobao and Tmall websites had total sales of 35 billion yuan ($5.7 billion) on Nov. 11 last year. In comparison, the two websites had average daily sales of 5 billion yuan in the first quarter of this year.
