Alibaba’s Taobao, Tmall cancel Dec 12 shopping festival, to host substitute event

BEIJING (Reuters): Alibaba’s online shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall cancelled their annual Dec. 12 shopping festival and will instead host another shopping spree called ‘year-end good price’ in December, according to notices on the platforms’ websites on Friday.

The dates of the new festival were not included in the notice, which was posted in a help section for platform merchants. Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the change.

The 12.12 shopping festival, held annually on Dec. 12 since 2012, was the less-celebrated sister of November’s Singles Day sales festival, which traditionally fell on Nov. 11 but has in recent years ballooned into a multi-week event beginning in late October.

This year marked the second time Alibaba declined to release its sales results for the Singles Day festival period, but data provider Syntun estimated cumulative gross merchandising volume (GMV) sales across major e-commerce platforms rose 2.08% to 1.14 trillion yuan ($156.40 billion) compared with growth of 2.9% last year.

According to Alibaba, 80 million products were offered at their deepest discount of the year for Singles Day.

Analysts saw Alibaba’s focus on discounts this year as an attempt to fight back against rivals such as Douyin and PDD Holdings’ (PDD.O) Pinduoduo that have changed the landscape of Chinese e-commerce in recent years by selling lower-cost and discounted items year-round.

A crisis in China’s giant property sector, where most of the country’s household wealth is parked, highly indebted local governments cutting spending, youth unemployment rates surpassing 20%, and falling wages in some sectors of the economy have combined to keep Chinese consumers in a thrifty mood.

“Macroeconomic headwinds are causing consumers to be more value-conscious,” consultancy Bain said in a report released earlier this month focused on Singles Day sales.