Chongqing- China's most significant annual shopping festival, Double Eleven, which falls on November 11, has become one of the country's dominant economic forces, with e-commerce platforms offering attractive discounts for customers. 

As the time for consumers to get their favorite stuff at the best price, the Double Eleven of this year saw 552 million parcels handled in a single day, 1.8 times the usual daily average, according to the State Post Bureau. 

Initial statistics from major e-commerce platforms showed robust growth for global brands during the festival season, as Chinese consumers strongly demand imports. 

Data from Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com showed that on its first day of presales for this year's shopping festival, the value of orders for products on its global brands' platform surged 178 percent year-on-year.

Another major market player Tmall said that more than 1,600 new overseas brands participated in the Double Eleven festival for the first time, bringing thousands of limited editions of new products.

iChongqing reporter Zhan interviewed Kevin Feng, founder, and chairman of OSell Group. (iChongqing/ Chen Zhan)

Cross-border makes the traditional trade chain shorter

More industrial clusters in China with conventional foreign trade advantages have achieved global business expansion through exports via cross-border e-commerce, a new business form of foreign trade. 

In the eyes of Kevin Feng, founder and chairman of OSell Group, cross-border is to help China's traditional production and trade enterprises use the latest Internet technology and big data, making the traditional trade chain shorter.

Through cross-border e-commerce, overseas consumers can obtain product information from manufacturing countries more conveniently and with lower prices, while exporting countries can access sales channels and consumer information, thus boosting production and industrial upgrading. 

A commodity exhibition area of OSell Group. (Photo provided to iChongqing)

As one of China's top cross-border e-commerce companies, OSell formed an overseas localized cross-border service platform with the Belt and Road Initiative and global resources, highlighting three overseas distribution regions: the Middle East, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and Africa. 

"We have set up many offline warehouses, experience stores, and sales service teams abroad, as well as information and financial links online between Chinese factories and overseas distributors," said Feng. "Through online and offline methods, Chinese goods can be directly served to the global terminal in one step."

Double Eleven is different from Black Friday in terms of sales method

"Double Eleven is a huge event in Singapore where everyone is looking forward to this shopping festival," said Yan Jiang Tan, director of operations of ACS Freight Services Pte Ltd representing YPL Singapore, a wholly owned subsidiary of YPL Chongqing. 

One of the major areas that Tan's team focuses on is providing last-mile delivery for e-commerce shipments imported from China. "For overseas warehouses like us, the opportunity is always in handling shipments and delivering the goods," he said. 

People are shopping in Sam's Club. (iChongqing file photo)

"The buyers are always looking forward to receiving the delivery of the items they brought from the e-commerce platforms," he added. "We foresee an increased demand for products shipped via e-commerce channels during this Double Eleven shopping festival."

China's Double Eleven shopping festival is not strange to foreign countries. The Indonesian team of OSell would also make some promotions to increase sales during such shopping festivals, including cooperating with third-party payments to offer customers more discounts, said Melisa Cipto Wulandari, sales manager of the Indonesia branch. 

Talking about the world's largest shopping festivals, Double Eleven and Black Friday, Feng said there are still some differences in sales channels, methods, and volume. 

For example, more than 90% of the Double Eleven sales activities are online, while the promotions of Black Friday are still mainly held by traditional shopping malls. The Double Eleven almost covers the full range of categories, series, ages, and uses, while on Black Friday, only individual sellers take several products to make some coupons and discounts.