MADRID, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- The Singles' Day shopping festival that originated from China and falls on Nov. 11 is getting popular in Europe thanks to growing online markets and speeding up delivery service.
In the past, it usually took at least two days for online purchase from overseas to reach Spain, even transported by airplane. However, AliExpress warehouses have dramatically reduced the delivery time.
By setting up three warehouses in Spain including one close to Madrid, AliExpress now allows Chinese sellers to stock up in advance and deliver the goods on the same day the order is placed.
AliExpress, an online retail service owned by China's Alibaba Group, offers products to global buyers. The group is one of the largest e-commerce brands worldwide that has successfully turned a celebration of Chinese singlehood into the world's biggest shopping event.
According to China's central bank, total transactions and their monetary value surged during China's "Double 11" shopping spree, up 19.6 percent year on year to 1.77 trillion yuan (about 267.22 billion U.S. dollars) on Wednesday.
China's online-payment clearing house NetsUnion and China UnionPay, a card-payment giant, processed a record high of 109,000 transactions per second at the peak time on Wednesday, up 26.19 percent from a year earlier, said the People's Bank of China.
The coronavirus pandemic that forced people to stay at home has promoted online shopping this year. AliExpress said its sales in Spain on Nov. 11 rose by over 60 percent from last year.
Ni Peijian, who is in charge of a warehouse of Cainiao Network, Alibaba's logistics arm, in Spain, said packaging and delivery can now be completed within 24 hours. The company employed 70 extra workers at the 6,000-square-meter facility in the face of a surge of orders during the shopping festival.
Javier Jimenez, director of Global Trans, a local delivery company that provides services to the Cainiao warehouse, also helped with the logistic work.
"The volume of parcels increased greatly in the last two or three years. Now the workload on this day is about 10 times that of usual," Jimenez said.
Their efforts to reduce the delivery time have paid off. Alejandro, a 35-year-old man from Madrid, received a Xiaomi 55-inch TV set just five hours after placing the order at AliExpress. He said he was delighted with the service.
Spain is now AliExpress' second largest overseas market, with local buyers doubling in number since the start of the year and the volume of orders up six-fold. Enditem