Online land of milk and honey

By the end of June, nine major retailers, including Dalian Wanda, Parkson and Marks & Spencer, had shut at least 25 stores in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other cities, Xinhua News Agency reported on Nov 12.

Many of the brick-and-mortar retailers have started to expand their presence online to make up for the slump in physical shopping.

Alibaba teamed up with 180,000 brick-and-mortar stores in 330 cities across China for the Nov 11 event, offering shoppers a more integrated and interactive shopping experience with their mobile phones online or in stores.

The physical stores integrate with Alibaba's membership and product management, logistics and delivery service systems.

For example, customers buying home appliances online were able to have their items delivered in as little as two hours from the nearest retail store taking part in the Nov 11 event.

They were also able to try on clothes at nearby shopping malls and buy items by smartphone at Nov 11 sale prices, via Alibaba's Tmall platform.

Suning Commerce Group, an electronic chain store headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, appeared to have done well out of its online-to-offline partnership with Alibaba.

The group says its orders on Nov 11 were triple those made last year.

Internet shoppers had ordered 37,000 health products from the United States by 11 am, says Sun Weimin, vice-chairman of Suning.

By 6 pm, customers also had ordered 220,000 Xiaomi smartphones, 380,000 boxes of Durex condoms and nearly the same number of mobile power chargers, Suning Group says.

Related:Today, China; tomorrow, the world 

Zhao Huanxin contributed to this story.

mengjing@chinadaily.com.cn