China's "Double Eleven" shopping festival goes beyond the digital sphere

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01:51

The numbers of this year's Double Eleven Shopping Festival have shattered previous records. But some of the industry's major players are keen to make sure this year's Double Eleven Festival is not constrained to just the digital sphere.

With the final countdown, a sleepless night begins, and the whole country is in front of the screen, trying to snatch up a bargain.

In just two minutes, sales on Alibaba's online platform Tmall hit 10 billion yuan, or about 1.4 billion US dollars. To elevate the shopping experience to a higher level this year, Alibaba came up with a new strategy.

Alibaba Singles' Day sales surpass last year's whole-day record of 168.2 billion yuan ($24 bln) at 15:49 BJT./VCG Photo

"It's a seamless online and offline shopping experience for this year's Double Eleven Festival,'' said Jing Jie, President of Tmall. “We can experience this in more than 400 cities in China, especially in the 12 cities among them that we call ideal cities for new retail.''

The growing e-commerce industry seems to have devastated traditional retail stores in China. But many business groups want to lure smartphone-addicted shoppers to physical stores that have been turned into "smart stores" with new technology.

Gimmicks such as code-scanning and augmented reality are used in stores to achieve the full integration of digital and physical commerce.

The Double Eleven Festival started ten years ago as a day for the country's singles to buy things for themselves online.

And as China's consumption power continues to grow, online retail sales have also witnessed a boom, with more than three-quarters of a trillion US dollars in the first eight months this year.

So it comes as no surprise that the Double Eleven Festival is on a larger scale than ever. More than 19,000 overseas brands from 75 countries and regions are participating in the event.