＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
<Added on 9/18/2020> Alibaba’s sales are booming due to “stay-at-home demand” amid the COVID-19 pandemic
While real stores” (physical stores) are suffering from declining sales due to the COVID-19 pandemic, e-commerce sites such as Alibaba are thriving thanks to stay-at-home demand.
Alibaba’s sales for the January-March 2020 period increased 22% compared to the same period last year, and its sales for the April-June 2020 period increased 34% compared to the same period last year.
1. Alibaba’s sales on Singles’ Day exceeded Rakuten’s annual sales
On Singles’ Day (November 11th) in China, news broke that Tmall（「天猫」）, a shopping mall operated by Alibaba Group（「アリババ集団」）, China’s largest online retailer, recorded sales of 3.511 trillion yen, surpassing Rakuten E-Commerce Market’s annual sales of 3.3912 trillion yen (2017 results).
2. What is “Singles Day”?
What is “Singles’ Day” in the first place? In Chinese, it is called “Guanggun Festival(「光棍節（こうこんせつ）」）” (“Guanggun” means singles in Chinese) or “Double Eleven(双十一)”, but November 11th is called “Singles’ Day” because there are four consecutive “1”s (singles). It is said to be an activity for “commemorative days for singles” started by students at Nanjing University in 1993.
Apparently, various activities take place here, such as singles gathering together to hold parties or searching for marriage partners.
The “Alibaba Group” noticed this and linked it to business. It’s a similar idea to Japan’s “Valentine’s Day sales campaign.”
This “Singles’ Day” sale by the “Alibaba Group” began in 2009. It was originally intended to convey the message, “Singles! Come and have fun shopping!” Eventually, it came to be recognized as a “sales day” open to the general public, not just singles. This sale lasts for about a week.
Sales have been increasing steadily every year, and last year, in one day, it came “close” to the annual sales volume of Rakuten EC Market, but this year, it has “exceeded” that figure.
3. Rapid growth of China’s online shopping market
China’s online shopping market was worth approximately 30 trillion yen in 2015, with a growth rate of 33.9% and an e-commerce rate of 12.74%. Japan’s online shopping market was worth approximately 13.8 trillion yen in 2015, with a growth rate of 7.6% and an e-commerce rate of 4.75%. It is easy to see just how rapidly China is growing.
Aside from Chinese products, you may be wondering what other countries’ products are being imported and purchased. The results are: 1st place, Japan, 2nd place, America, 3rd place, Australia, 4th place, Germany, and 5th place, South Korea. This means that Alibaba Group’s “Singles’ Day” sale is also a big business opportunity for Japanese companies.
Unicharm’s “Moony” diapers ranked second among imported brands, while Uniqlo ranked first in the apparel category.
Companies in the Kansai region are also focusing on the cross-border EC market, with Kintetsu Department Store doubling the number of items it handles, and Kobayashi Pharmaceutical increasing the number of “influencers” who are influential online and strengthening information transmission via SNS.
We are also curious to know what products are selling well. The results show that the top selling products are “smartphones,” “disposable diapers,” and “detergent.” Japanese products are also selling well, but recently the popularity of Chinese products has been recovering in “home appliances” and “baby products,” so Japanese companies cannot be optimistic about the future.
In addition, Alibaba Group is not the only one that held Singles’ Day sales, as the second-placed Jingdong Group（「京東集団」） also held similar sales, and reportedly recorded sales that were significantly higher than last year. However, Alibaba Group’s sales growth rate was 36% in 2017 compared to the previous year, but only 27% in 2018, the lowest year-on-year sales growth rate. This suggests that sales will eventually plateau.
In the future, Alibaba Group plans to focus on sales in physical stores and outside of China.
Even so, “Alibaba Group” is a very unusual name comparable to “Amazon”, but it is a young company founded in 1999. Although it has only been in business for 19 years, it has become a “rapidly growing company” that is the largest in the “Chinese online shopping market”. Japanese people and Japanese companies will be keeping a close eye on how it will develop in the future.