By Casey Hall and Sophie Yu
SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China's Singles' Day sales festival is coming to a close after more than a month of promotions on the country's largest e-commerce platforms, which failed to spark widespread consumer excitement during the world's largest shopping event.
Consumer malaise in China, stemming from a prolonged property crisis and concerns about income security, has made it harder than ever to get people to open their wallets.
In response, retailers have become more aggressive
about year-round discounting, rolled out billions of yuan in consumer subsidies and coupons and elongated sales events.
Many sites kicked off this year's Singles' Day - which refers to November 11, or 11.11 - in the first half of October, making it the longest festival to date.
"It is a mixed bag," said Josh Gardner, CEO of Kung Fu Data, which manages online stores in China for over a dozen global fashion and lifestyle brands. "Muted might be a good word to describe sentiment and sales this Singles' Day period."
"We have some brands that have done extremely well, far exceeding expectations," he added. "Others are flat or up or down slightly over last year."
Last year's sales for what was then the longest-ever event - also called "Double 11" in China - totaled 1.44 trillion yuan ($202 billion), according to Syntun, a data provider.
FEW DETAILS ON PLATFORMS' SALES
While major platforms once held galas to herald the record-breaking sales that seemed to just roll in year after year, companies including Alibaba and JD.com have not disclosed total Singles' Day sales for several years.
On Wednesday, JD.com said its turnover had reached a "new high," with the number of users placing orders increasing by 40% and the number of orders increasing by nearly 60%.
On JD.com, sales of Bellamy Organic baby products from Australia, American pet brand Instinct and French skincare from Avène all increased by over 150% from a year earlier, the company said.
Alibaba's Tmall and Taobao platforms are offering Double 11 deals through November 14, but the company has yet to release any information on their sales performance through the end of November 11.
Earlier, Alibaba said 35 brands, including Nike, L'Oreal and local firms Anta and beauty upstart Proya, sold more than 100 million yuan worth of merchandise in the first hour of the sale this year.
Gardner said the Singles' Day "sales spike" is not as strong as it used to be, but October and November still account for around 30% to 40% of annual revenue for the brands he manages.
"Up until last year, I would always plan ahead for Double 11, making a list of what to buy, but I didn't do that this year," said Li Yan, a 45-year-old housewife in Beijing. "It's just so convenient to buy things anytime now, so I spent the shopping festival without buying any big-ticket items."
COUPONS FOR BIG SPENDERS, INTERNATIONAL GROWTH
In an effort to entice big spenders to splash out even more, Alibaba in October pledged 50 billion yuan in subsidies specifically for its 53 million 88VIP members.
Last week, the company said among those members, there was a 39% rise in daily active buyers from a year earlier during the festival.
"From the merchant perspective, targeting 88VIP consumers is important because those consumers are high-spend and high-frequency ... helping sustain consumption at the upper-end of the market (which) has been resilient," said Jacob Cooke, co-founder and CEO of WPIC Marketing + Technologies.
Alibaba's Taobao rolled out Singles' Day-related sales in over 20 countries this year, part of what has been a near industry-wide push from Chinese e-commerce firms to grow overseas.
In a Singles' Day report released in late October, Bain said Chinese e-commerce companies needed to look for global growth sooner rather than later given the tepid consumer outlook at home.
In London, Alibaba's AliExpress hosted a livestream event featuring Pop Mart toys in an event it expected would sell 10,000 gifts to shoppers following along on the AliExpress app.
(Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
