On May 21st, Tmall released sales data for the first day of the "618" shopping festival. It was reported that within 30 minutes of the festival's start, brands like P&G, Lancôme, L'Oréal, and Estée Lauder each achieved sales exceeding one billion yuan. In the first hour of sales, Apple's transactions surpassed 15 billion yuan, while Huawei, Xiaomi, and Vivo also reached sales exceeding one billion yuan. A total of 28 brands achieved sales exceeding one billion yuan within the first hour of the festival. Luxury brands such as MiuMiu, Valentino, Marni, and Lemaire also saw sales exceeding last year's full-day sales within just one hour.
This year, many e-commerce platforms participating in the "618" festival opted to cancel pre-sales. Tmall officially started its "618" sales at 8 p.m. on May 20th. According to Tmall data, by midnight on May 21st, after four hours of sales, 59 brands on the platform had sales exceeding one billion yuan, with 376 individual products achieving sales exceeding ten million yuan. In the beauty category, 11 brands achieved sales exceeding one billion yuan within four hours, with P&G's sales exceeding 470 million yuan. A total of 118 individual products achieved sales exceeding ten million yuan. In the home furnishing and electronics category, brands like Dyson, Haier, Hisense, Xiaomi, Lin's Furniture, and Quanyou saw sales exceeding one billion yuan, with 119 individual products achieving sales exceeding ten million yuan.
Compared to last year's first day of the "618" festival on Tmall, the sales of alcoholic beverages through live streaming increased by over 1300%, driving a 147% growth in the liquor industry. On the opening night, nearly 30 Taobao live streaming rooms for alcoholic beverages went live simultaneously.
In terms of Taobao live streaming, within the first hour of sales, popular hosts like Li Jiaqi, Lier Baobei, Honey Surprise Society, Xianggu Came, Chen Jie KiKi, and Jiu Meimei were among the first to achieve sales exceeding one billion yuan. A new influencer in the alcohol category, Jiu Meimei, achieved sales exceeding one billion yuan in just 43 minutes and reached a total sales volume of 170 million yuan within four hours.
Overall, this year's "618" festival on Tmall focused on creating a more aggressive pricing strategy for platform products. Tmall's GMV with a hundred billion yuan subsidy in the first hour of sales increased by 596.5% compared to the same period last year. For example, the price of a 128GB iPhone 15 at the official Tmall Apple flagship store was as low as 4599 yuan after various discounts, a reduction of 1400 yuan. On the morning of May 21st, the same product was priced at 4673 yuan in the Apple JD self-operated flagship store and 4495 yuan with a hundred billion yuan subsidy on Pinduoduo.
Leading up to the "618" festival, Taobao also launched the 88VIP unlimited return with free shipping service to increase consumer order rates.
Additionally, publicly available information indicates that Tmall made its largest-ever investment in beauty coupons, upgrading and enhancing them. In addition to cross-store discounts, Tmall introduced beauty super coupons and surprise coupons. Within 30 minutes of the "618" festival's start, 30 individual beauty products, including Fomei's Rejuvenating Essence, Jiaoyunshi's Dual Essence, Xiu Li Ke's AGE Cream, L'Oréal's Revitalift Mask, and Helena's Black Bandage Cream, achieved sales exceeding ten million yuan.
Facing the traffic challenges during the major promotion, Tmall invested more resources this year. In terms of merchant services, Tmall introduced massive star maps, upgraded cooperation with over 200 internet platforms including Tencent Advertising, Zhihu, and Bilibili to enhance merchants' customer acquisition capabilities. The venue's visit volume increased 14 times compared to last year's "618" festival.
From the perspective of the "618" festival, Taobao's competitive strategy currently revolves around price competitiveness and enhancing user experience.
On May 14th, Alibaba Group's CEO and Taotian Group's CEO, Wu Yongming, stated during a financial report conference call that Alibaba will enhance the pricing power and conversion efficiency of goods by differentiating between brand merchants, channel merchants, and industrial belt factories (OEM markets) and adopting different product forms and business models. Furthermore, by emphasizing customer experience, including logistics and customer service, they aim to increase customer purchase frequency, attract more repeat customers, and draw in new customers.
