When Alibaba booked 9.3 billion U.S. dollars on Singles' Day last year, Takeuchi Toshiaki knew China was a market he could not ignore.
Head of Kao Corp., a Japanese cosmetics maker, Toshiaki attended Alibaba's launch of this year's campaign in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province on Tuesday. Takeuchi already has a deal with Alibaba's international retail platform Tmall.
Singles Day, on Nov 11 (11.11) has grown into the Chinese version of online shopping day Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. Alibaba "invented" Singles Day in 2009.
The annual shopping spree has not only caught the attention of Takeuchi -- Choi Woo Jung, executive vice president of e-commerce with Republic of Korea (ROK) supermarket chain Emart, said his company is ready for the big day. Emart opened its online store on Tmall in April.
"China is a huge market for us," Choi said, citing examples of Chinese consumers on shopping frenzies in the ROK, with Emart stores in Seoul crammed with Chinese customers.
"Almost all the customers I saw were Chinese, even our sales people were Chinese," he said. "Their impact is obvious."
Also vying for the Chinese market is Macy's. The U.S. department store reached agreement with Alibaba this summer to open on Tmall. Consumption in China is quite similar to the U.S., said Kent Anderson, managing director of Macy's China, comparing the period after Thanksgiving with China's Singles' Day.
Macy's targets the American middle class and the growing middle class in China with their penchant for high-quality, branded goods provides a comparable marketplace.
Macy's formed a joint venture with Hong Kong's Fung Retailing Ltd. this August to explore retailing in China. Anderson said the joint venture will reduce the time and cost of shipping goods to the Chinese mainland.
The Chinese consumers are increasingly important in global business, with a June report by consulting firm Accenture and Alibaba showing that China will be the largest cross-border B2C market by 2020, contributing to four-percent growth of global cross-border consumption.
While enthusiasm for online shopping runs high, Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, wants to "let the whole world join China's consumer market", adding that there will be "half a billion Chinese middle class" in "the next 15 to 20 years."
"We should import from the world, we have to make sure we have the best services and products from the world," he said. "The Nov.11 global shopping day is just the beginning."
