NZ retailers enjoy huge sales on world's biggest online shopping day

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang (centre) attends end of Single's Day global shopping festival ceremony. Photo / Getty

The success of China's 11.11 event has extended to New Zealand with a number of retailers seeing huge sales volumes from customers in China.

Pablo Kraus, chief executive of eco-friendly household and personal care products company Ecostore, said this year's Singles' Day sale had been a "resounding success".

Through Alibaba, Ecostore achieved more than $1 million in sales, exceeding last year's sales totals recorded in its first hour and a half. Ecostore sold more than 150,000 products, with its year on year growth close to 150 per cent.

"With such significant sales, Ecostore holds its own as a top performing brand for Tmall global in the personal care and household cleaning category, alongside leading brands Procter & Gamble, Chemist Warehouse and Unilever," Kraus said.

On Singles' Day, the company found that 95 per cent of customers had purchased products via mobile, nearly 66 per cent were new to the brand and close to 76 per cent of consumers were female.

Alibaba Group's Australia New Zealand managing director Maggie Zhou said the local Alibaba division was established to help New Zealand companies grow in its 11.11 festivals.

"We are thrilled that New Zealand brands have continued to see success on the world stage, adding further proof of the growing appetite for high-quality New Zealand goods among Chinese consumers," Zhou said.

Alibaba smashed its Singles' Day record once again this year with sales topping $36 billion (US$25.3b) during its annual 24-hour online shopping festival.

Rival e-commerce site JD.com made $27.6b (US$19.1b), up 50 per cent from last year.

Wine retailer Glengarry also celebrated Singles' Day, offering its customers discounts in its first ever Singles' Day promotion.

"We saw a very good list in terms of traffic to our website," Glengarry managing director Liz Wheadon said. "In comparison to the previous Saturday it would have been four times the amount of traffic to the site - a really good lift, a really good interaction on social media as well and very good feedback, particularly from the Chinese community within New Zealand."

Matthew Crabbe, Asia Pacific research director at Mintel, said the success of this year's Singles' Day could partly be attributed to the annual shopping festival falling on a Saturday.

"E-commerce is successful because it uses technology to make shopping more efficient and less painful. The only thing hampering the uptake of e-commerce is the lack of technology in certain populations, and reticence to change because of long-standing traditions of going to physical stores," Crabbe said.

"New Zealand brands have been getting themselves heard through Alibaba's platforms, but only during 11.11 and at other times."

Online electronics retailer Thieve, which sells a number of hand-picked products from AliExpress, sold over 10,000 products on Singles' Day and received more than 500,000 page views on its website from 157 different countries.

Thieve founder Tim Scullin said he was blown away by the number of people who visited his website for the event.

"At one point we were selling a product a second through our affiliate links which was just insane for us. We had expected it to be bigger than previous years but this was a surprise," Scullin said.

Antipodes chief executive Elizabeth Barbalich said 11.11 presented an amazing opportunity to bring it products to China.

NZX-listed skincare brand Trilogy also held its first Singles' Day promotion this year.

Trilogy digital and social specialist Kristina Andreassen said the online retail event embodied the companies' values and was excited to be a part of the event.

"We want to connect with audiences on a powerful shopping event and in particular compliment our growth in the Chinese market by celebrating events important to the Chinese customer."