Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang Outlines Key Priorities for the Global Shopping Festival

Welcome to Alibaba, and thank you for making this trip to Hangzhou to join us for this special event. Today is November 13th, and in less than one month, November 11 for 2015 is coming. So this year will be the seventh November 11th in Alibaba. Actually today, I just want to give you a quick overview and a quick introduction of the origins of November 11. I think seven years ago at that time, e-commerce was not so popular as it is today, and Tmall as a new business in Alibaba Group. So seven years ago, when I worked with my team, I said, 'Okay, today in China, we don't have a day like what happened in the US, like Black Friday.' So let's work to find a day for our Chinese consumers, let's try to find a day to help people to remember Tmall, our new brand. So this is exactly the beginning of November 11. So when we started our work, we noted that maybe the fourth quarter is a good timing for us to have a big marketing event. Why that? The reason is very simple, because the fourth season is actually usually the peak season for the retail industry, not only in China, I think also globally. And we further believe that maybe November is a better time for us to select in the fourth quarter. In China, why is November a good time? The reason behind this is that in October, we have the famous Golden Week. Chinese people enjoy a long holiday in the first seven days of October, and this is a golden time for the retail business. And in December, again, all consumers enjoy the Christmas season. But very magically, November is very silent. So we believe that November is a good month for us to initiate a big campaign for our consumers. Because at this time frame, people have a solid demand because of the seasonality change. In the north of China, a lot of people are already in the winter, and they have to get a lot of stuff for the winter. And even in Southern China, people are also in the autumn period. So November is a good month for us to have a big campaign to meet the demand of consumers. So the next question is what day is it. So I remember at that time I asked my team to do some research to find a Chinese festival to start our marketing event. That's my original thinking. Then my team worked very hard to find the day, but finally they came to me very disappointed and said, 'Daniel, we cannot find a good day which is a holiday in November.' All the Chinese people here can agree that in November, we don't have a big holiday, no public holiday in November. Then I said, 'How about a Western festival?' So people went back and worked again. Then they came back to me saying that, 'Okay, now we find, on top of Black Friday, on top of Thanksgiving, we find a new festival which is new to all of us, including me, which is Singles Day.' Actually, that time was my first time to hear about Singles Day. I never knew about this. 'What is Singles Day?' I asked. So people said, 'This is the day for single men and women.' Okay, I think if people are still single, we can offer them a good choice and they can enjoy online shopping, then they will not feel alone. So that's our thinking of November 11. So then we decided to do this. So that's the origins of November 11 seven years ago. But fortunately, after seven years, November 11 is not only a day for Tmall; it's not a day just for a marketing event. Now it is a day for consumers in China and globally. So when we look at what happened in the past seven years, what we see is that e-commerce now is actually the lifestyle of Chinese people. Online shopping is not only a behavior people do very occasionally. Now a lot of people are just living online: via online shopping, via e-commerce, they can enjoy a lot of physical and mental products, digital products. So people can live online and they can purchase whatever they want to make a living. On the other hand, what we can see is that all of our partners, all these young companies, all famous companies who have very long history, very successful business in China and globally, now view e-commerce actually as not just an extra part of their business. Today, all businesses are in the process of digital transformation. So we believe it's the reason for the success of November 11 in the past six years. So today, when we look at what we will do for this year's November 11th, we think November 11 we have to make some change. So actually this year, we will have three milestones, three new milestones. First milestone: we decide to post our chief command and our war room to Beijing to take charge of November 11th. As you know, Alibaba's headquarters is in Hangzhou, and all of our staff, our business in Hong Kong, and we have run our November 11 in Hangzhou in the past six years. But this year, for the first time, we will move our chief command and war room to monitor November 11 to Beijing. Why do we want to do that? The reason is very straightforward. We believe that Beijing, as the capital of China, has the greatest influence in China and globally. We will start our long journey of globalization; we believe Beijing is a good starting point for this long journey from China to the globe. Second: for the first time, on the evening of November 10th, we will have a gala together with our partners in the TV station. So we will have a great event in Beijing to help people warm up, to anticipate and to look forward to the coming great event in November 11. So we will have a big party on the evening of November 10th. Last one: for the first time, we decide that globalization should be the key theme of November 11 this year and in the future. Why that? Actually, when we look at our retail platforms, when we look at November 11 in the past six years, we already have a lot of foreign companies, our partners; actually they are foreign brands doing business very successfully on our November 11 and all our retail platforms. Why this year we say that November 11th should be the key thing? I think there are three reasons behind this. The first reason is that we believe this is the demand of Chinese consumers. Today, people are enjoying a better lifestyle. People are not looking for the pure cheap product; people want high quality products with high quality services. People not only want products from China but want products from other countries. In every single public holiday in China, we can see so many Chinese tourists who make purchases in other countries. It's a crazy thing. So why do people have to go out of our country and go to other markets to buy? How can we help them to stay at home, to enjoy the fun of online shopping and enjoy high quality products from the global market? So we believe this is the request from our consumers. The second reason: we believe that globalization is also the request of our business partners, of the merchants, of our partners in the ecosystem. On that side, today all companies are in the process of digital transformation. People understand that by leveraging the strengths of the internet, business can connect with consumers in a more efficient way. So Alibaba, together with our retail marketplaces, every day we have hundreds of millions of people visiting our PC and mobile sites. Last year, we had 350 million people who bought at least once on our retail marketplaces. So consumers are already there. All the business people want to serve these consumers with better products. And new merchants not only from China, especially global merchants, some of them maybe never had business in China; they don't have offline operations right now. And even for a lot of multinational companies, they have been in China for many years, but they have such an extensive product portfolio and they want to introduce new products to Chinese consumers using a more efficient way. So we believe that the online platform can play a very important role in this transformation. So November 11 is a good opportunity, it is the best opportunity to help our suppliers and our consumers to connect with each other. So the last reason for the globalization of November 11 is because of the mission of Alibaba. I believe most people know that Alibaba has a great mission, which is to make it easy to do business anywhere. We started our business with this great mission 16 years ago. We continued to follow this mission in the last 16 years, and we will continue to do so in the next 86 years. So when we talk about making it easy to do business anywhere, this 'anywhere' should be not only in China but also globally. So that's why we believe the globalization of November 11 is the starting point of our long journey to be a real global company, to build a real global trading platform, to enable buyers and sellers, to enable partners to connect with each other. Jack has said to us that in 10, 20 years, Alibaba has a dream: we want to be a company that can serve 2 billion people. So today, we are at the starting point. In China, we have a huge customer base; we are probably already close to 1 billion. But we want to serve one more billion people; we have to go out of China, to help people in the global market to trade with each other, to serve each other. So that constitutes the reason for the globalization of November 11. We want to lead this November 11 to be a day not only for Chinese consumers but also for global consumers. I think all the buyers, all the partners, all the sellers on our platform love this, and we believe that if we continue this and work hard, work closely with all our merchants, with all our partners on the platform, we can create another magic result. So, as I said, globalization will be the core strategy for Alibaba in the next decades. So we need talents to help us lead this global strategy. So that's why we have our Mike Evans join us a couple of months ago. We are very happy to have Mike join us. Mike is a proven business leader in the international financial industry, and he has extensive international working experience. He used to be a partner at Goldman Sachs for 20 years. At the same time, he also has extensive experience in China, because when he was at Goldman, he led their Asia products and helped a lot of Chinese enterprises to go public and to serve them with financial services.