Malaysians gear up for Alibaba's Singles' Day shopping frenzy

As the clock ticks towards midnight, the regular Ali, Ah Chong and Muthu will be scrambling to the famous online shopping boutiques for the planet's biggest online shopping fest, Alibaba's '11.11 Singles’ Day'.

Malaysians too will pay closer attention the festival this year more than ever, with Alibaba’s “Taobao Collection” being made available on Lazada.

Sales figures of Singles' Day this year are perhaps an important sign that China’s economic transformation is alive and well.

“China wants to evolve from an export and investment driven economy to a consumption driven economy,” said Joseph C.Tsai, Executive Vice Chairman of the Alibaba Group.

Indeed, the grand transformation of the world’s second biggest economy has sent ripples of waves across the global economy for the past few years, especially for developing economies like Malaysia.

Last year, sales of Singles' Day reached USD17.8 bil, more than 18 times the size of Amazon Prime Day and 2.5 times than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

It's also bigger than the Gross Domestic Product of 83 countries in that same year, according to World Bank figures.

This year, the world awaits whether Singles' Day will again break records and reverberate throughout the world’s e-commerce landscape.

Alibaba isn't showing no signs of taking their foot of the pedal this year, courting more than 140,000 brands and 1 million merchants for this year’s festival.

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* The writer is in Shanghai where the next 24-hours of Nov 11 will be 'madness' for global e-commerce – but a good kind of madness.

** Follow my reports on Astro AWANI’s Facebook and the @501Awani Twitter and www.astroawani.com