Sales performance of Taiwanese e-commerce players on Saturday set new records last weekend, thanks to Taiwanese interest in the annual Singles’ Day shopping festival that originated in China in the 1990s.
TV and online retailer Momo.com Inc (富邦媒) said revenue skyrocketed 150 percent year-on-year to NT$740 million (US$24.51 million) on Singles’ Day, also known as “Double 11” for the Nov. 11 date, from NT$300 million on the same day last year.
The NT$740 million is 10 times higher than its average daily revenue, setting a new record for a daily high, Momo.com said, adding that online visitors on Saturday jumped 56.25 percent annually to reach 7.5 million.
Momo.com said the largest purchase on that day was NT$2.4 million and the second-biggest buy was more than NT$1 million. The company declined to disclose the products, saying it would be a violation of customer privacy.
“The festive atmosphere for Singles’ Day is much stronger in Taiwan this year, as more e-commerce operators are joining the annual shopping festival and are stepping up marketing efforts,” Momo.com president Lin Chi-feng (林啟峰) told a media gathering at the beginning of this month.
Momo.com said it integrated its online and offline resources by convening a 10-hour marketing event in Xinyi District on Saturday, inviting 11 Taiwanese celebrities to live-stream promotions of discounted products displayed on the event stage.
PChome Online Inc (網路家庭), the nation’s largest online shopping portal operator, joined the shopping festival for the first time this year.
PChome invited singers, such as South Korea’s Hyeon-a and Taiwan’s Show Luo (羅志祥), for a three-hour Singles’ Day event from 9pm to midnight Friday night and broadcast the show on its Web site and its social network accounts.
PChome said the number of new members registered on Friday was five times higher than its daily average and that the number of purchases tripled its daily average. The company declined to reveal exact figures.
PChome subsidiary PChomestore Inc (商店街) said that orders on Saturday broke the company’s daily order record — 430,000 — and that revenue ballooned 600 percent compared with the same day last year.
TV shopping operator Eastern Home Shopping & Leisure Co Ltd (EHS, 東森購物) said its sales on Saturday increased by 80 percent compared with the same day a year ago and represented a quadruple jump over its daily sales.
EHS attributed the strong growth to the increasing popularity of the Singles’ Day shopping event in Taiwan.
“The fact that Singles’ Day this year happened to be on a weekend also gave consumers more time to shop,” the company said in a statement.
Ryanair, Transavia, Volotea and other low-cost airlines are feeling the financial pain from high jet fuel prices as a result of the Middle East war and are cutting flights. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has taken a huge chunk of oil supplies off the market, sending the price of jet fuel soaring and triggering fears of shortages that could force airlines to cancel flights. Airlines are not waiting for a lack of supplies to react. “Travel alert: Airlines are cutting thousands of flights right now,” Travel Therapy host Karen Schaler said in an Instagram reel this past weekend.
MANAGING RISKS: Taiwan has secured LNG sufficient to cover 95 percent of electricity demand for next month, UBS said, describing the government’s approach as proactive UBS Group AG has raised its forecast for Taiwan’s economic growth this year to 8 percent, up from 6.9 percent previously, and said expansion could reach as high as 8.6 percent if external energy shocks are avoided. The upgrade reflects a stronger-than-expected first-quarter performance and sustained momentum in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven exports, which UBS said are providing a firm foundation for growth despite geopolitical and energy risks. Taiwan’s GDP expanded 13.69 percent year-on-year in the first quarter, the fastest growth since the second quarter of 1987, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) reported on Thursday. On a seasonally
The Fair Trade Commission’s (FTC) ongoing review of Grab Holdings Ltd’s US$600 million acquisition of Foodpanda Taiwan’s operations, announced on March 23, has taken on fresh urgency as industry experts warn that the transaction could embed significant Chinese cybersecurity vulnerabilities into Taiwan’s digital infrastructure through Grab’s deep ties to autonomous-driving firm WeRide (文遠知行). Less than 16 months after the FTC blocked Uber Eats’ direct attempt to acquire Foodpanda Taiwan — citing potential combined market shares of 80 to 90 percent — the emergence of Grab as the buyer has prompted questions about whether the same competitive harm is simply being rerouted
The list of Asian stocks that benefit from business partnership with Nvidia Corp is getting longer, as the region further integrates into the artificial intelligence (AI) chip giant’s business ecosystem. Just in the past week, South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc, Taiwan’s Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), as well as China’s Huizhou Desay SV Automotive Co (德賽西威) and Pateo Connect Technology Shanghai Corp (博泰車聯) have become the latest to rally on news of tie-ups, supply-chain participation or product collaboration with the US chip designer. Asian suppliers account for about 90 percent of Nvidia’s production costs, up from about 65 percent last year, data compiled
RSS