THE planet’s biggest online shopping splurge is being been blamed for the ongoing shortage of baby formula in Australian supermarkets.
“Singles Day” is a one-day online sale hosted every year on November 11 by China’s e-commerce giant, Alibaba. And despite a recent slowdown in their economy, Chinese shoppers handed over $20 billion (91 billion Chinese yuan) in only 24 hours at this year’s event.
That’s 60 per cent more than they spent last year. The cumulative national bill for the day-long commercial orgy overnight dwarfed Americans’ online spending over the five-day frenzy from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday last year.
Among the bargain hunters were fearful Chinese parents who have turned to Australian-made products after a number of deadly domestic formula scares, including one contamination incident in 2008 that killed six babies and made 300,000 others sick.
Overnight, thousands of listings for Australian baby formula products have sprung up on Taobao, China’s answer to eBay, in time for Singles Day.
Chinese tourists, students and relatives living in Australia had been bulk-buying during the past week to coincide with the November shopping frenzy.
Affluent families want high-end, Aussie-made formulas such as the a2 and Bellamy’s Organic ranges.
The tins, which usually retail for $25-30 in Australian shops, fetch prices of $150-$190 online.
The surge in demand has left many Australian mums complaining they can’t source the brands they’ve always fed their babies.
It has sparked reports of people stripping supermarket shelves of quality formulas, knowing they can be resold for enormous profit to Chinese buyers desperate for safe products.
The a2 Milk Company says demand for its products — which are manufactured only in Australia and New Zealand — has skyrocketed over the past six months, forcing it to ramp up production.
The company already exports to China, but some Chinese still prefer to source what they need from Australia because they fear counterfeit products.
The Federal Government says it would intervene in the premium baby formula shortage as “an absolute last resort”.
“I don’t think government intervention is something we really want to see,” Assistant Minister for Trade Richard Colbeck told ABC TV this morning.
Singles Day is not a traditional Chinese festival, but e-commerce giant Alibaba has been pushing November 11 — a date heavy on ones, the loneliest number — since 2009 as it looks to tap the country’s huge, and expanding, army of internet shoppers.
It was first marketed as an “anti-Valentine’s Day”, featuring hefty discounts to lure singletons and price-sensitive buyers. But with sales hitting new highs year after year, it has become a massive — and highly lucrative — business opportunity embraced by the nation’s digital retailers.
Competition for a slice of China’s 668 million internet users is turning increasingly fierce, and Alibaba kicked off this year’s mammoth event with a television spectacular at Beijing’s Water Cube Olympic swimming venue.
James Bond actor Daniel Craig and Hollywood star Kevin Spacey — in his role as President Frank Underwood from the Netflix series House of Cards — were just two of the galaxy of foreign and domestic stars involved.
The company’s efforts paid off in spades.
A little over 12 hours after the promotion’s midnight start, sales had already outstripped last year’s $US9.3 billion ($A13.24 billion) gangbusters effort.
By around 10pm, shoppers had splashed out almost $13 billion, according to a company blog.
The figures were “very solid evidence for the power of Chinese consumers”, chief executive officer Daniel Zhang was quoted as saying, adding that when the company started the event “we never dreamed it could be such a huge shopping day”.
In comparison, desktop sales for the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in the United States last year stood at $US6.56 billion, according to internet analytics firm comScore. Another of China’s main online retailers,
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