A sales promotion sign is seen during Black Friday sales at a shop in Geneva, Switzerland, Nov 25, 2022. Photo:Xinhua

 

"About 1.3 million hats will be sold around the world during the Black Friday shopping event. Our inventory is five times the sales of the same period in 2022," an owner surnamed Liu of a Wenzhou-based hat enterprise told the Global Times on Thursday.

This is the company's second participation in the Black Friday shopping spree, which falls on November 24 this year.

Liu said that his company has produced more than 1 million of its best-selling hats and booked about 60 machines at outsourcing factories to increase production if needed.

Liu is among thousands of Chinese vendors who are targeting this year's Black Friday shopping festival and the Christmas shopping season. It is expected that Chinese commodities from clothes and  electronic products to home appliances will see an uptick in global sales, thanks to the products' increasing popularity in overseas markets and improved logistics links.  

Yang Hai, a Ningbo-based seller of pet clothing, told the Global Times that she expects sales to grow at least 20 percent year-on-year. She put her products on Chinese e-commerce platform SHEIN in June 2020 and saw immediate overseas sales growth. 

"Made-in-China products are still a popular choice for overseas consumers, and sales prospects are vast," Liu said.

According to an estimate by Adobe Analytics, sales for the Black Friday shopping season (the full months of November and December) in the US are expected to reach $221.8 billion. Last year, sales hit $211.7 billion.

In addition to Chinese companies, more Chinese cross-border e-commerce platforms have been joining the sales bonanza, leveraging their rich experience in marketing and delivery to compete head-to-head with US traditional sellers such as Amazon. 

"Black Friday is not only a shopping spree for overseas consumers, but also a key 'battle' for the Chinese cross-border e-commerce industry. Many have pinned their sales growth hopes on the year-end overseas shopping season," Bai Ming, a deputy director of the international market research institute at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times.

Hat exporter Liu this year joined Temu, the overseas cross-border e-commerce platform of Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo.

"The logistics system has been significantly improved, with the domestic shipping time halved to two days. I estimate that on the traditional cross-border e-commerce platforms, labor, customer service, logistics and other expenditures account for about 30 percent of sales, while they only account for less than 10 percent on Temu," said Liu.

According to media reports, Temu has reached logistics cooperation deals with global shipping giants such as Matson, CMA CGM, Maersk and COSCO Shipping. For example, the fastest transportation time from Shanghai to Long Beach, California is only 11 days, which is half the time of traditional sea transportation.

Other Chinese e-commerce platforms have also made efforts in the areas of logistics and warehousing.

At the warehouses of Alibaba's AliExpress, inventories for Black Friday are up nearly nine times compared with last year, and most of the goods will be shipped to markets covered by the global five-day delivery service, Alibaba said.

A source at TikTok told the Global Times that the new TikTok Shop has planned subsidy discounts of up to 50 percent for this year's Black Friday shopping season.