(Photo/Chinanews.com)

Thanks to the efforts of platforms, courier companies, and online sellers for efforts to innovate the mode of the supply chain, parcels of this year’s “Double 11” online shopping festival in China have been delivered incredibly fast to consumers, with many receiving their parcels the same day they placed the orders, The Economic Observer reported on Nov.17.

By 8:01 a.m. on Nov. 11, 100 million parcels generated on Tmall, Alibaba’s e-commerce platform which was also the initiator of the “Double 11” online shopping spree in China, were sent out to their owners, 59 minutes faster than what was accomplished on average in 2018, as statistics showed.

Most of the first 100 million parcels from Tmall during this year’s “Double 11” shopping spree were from pre-estimated inventories, according to Cainiao Network Technology Co. Ltd., the logistics arm of Alibaba.

“90 percent of the first 100 million parcels from Tmall were delivered to their owners within the same day or the next day after they were paid online,” said Cainiao Network.

Such efficiency is largely attributed to the advance sale mechanisms adopted by many e-commerce platforms during this year. For example, major Chinese e-commerce platforms such as JD.com and Tmall all launched advanced sales a few weeks before Nov.11, when the “Double 11” shopping spree officially kicked off.

During the advanced sale period, buyers were required to pay deposits on the products they intended to buy during the “Double 11” online shopping festival. Then, based on analyses and calculations stemming from big data related to deposits as well as big data related to everyday orders as well as the products found in the shopping carts of online shoppers, targeted amounts of the goods with deposits were sent out as “pre-inventory” to courier services companies before the shopping spree began. Furthermore, these products were brought to the operation stores of couriers that were closest to the buyers who paid the deposits. The parcels were directly delivered from courier stores to buyers as soon as they paid the balance payments after the “Double 11” shopping festival sale officially commenced.

In the past, parcels were sent out from warehouses of sellers that were usually at least 100 kilometers away from buyers after they placed orders online during “Double 11” shopping festival, while this year many brands have cooperated with couriers to guarantee top speed delivery via advance sales, and some parcels were also sent to warehouses of couriers that were within 10 kilometers from buyers before the shopping spree started, reported Cainiao Network.

JD.com has further upgraded its smart logistics centers, the largest cluster of logistics centers of e-commerce platforms in Asia, for this year’s shopping spree, said Zhou Lifang, executive of logistics center of JD.com.

All the 25 “Asia No.1” smart logistics centers of JD.com were put into use, according to Zhou, disclosing that warehouses with robots amounted to 70.

In its more than 600 large-scale warehousing facilities with storage areas covering 15 million square meters, JD.com prepared over 1 billion products for consumers before this year’s “Double 11” shopping spree, said Zhou, noting the goods can fill 21 buildings about the size of the Forbidden City.

Even in remote towns more than 2,700 kilometers from Beijing, parcels were delivered very fast during this year’s “Double 11” shopping festival.

Even in Chengguan Town, Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture, in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, 75 percent of the orders placed online can be delivered to buyers within 12 hours, according to Zhou, adding that the other 25 percent could be received within 24 hours.

According to State Post Bureau of China, the country has seen as many as 2.8 billion parcels during this year’s “Double 11” shopping spree, and each of the 2.1 million front-line delivery workers across the country are handling an average of 240 parcels every day.