NANJING, China, Aug. 21, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Suning.com ("the Company"), a Fortune Global 500 retail company and China's largest online-to-offline (O2O) smart retailer owned by Suning Holdings Group closed their 6th annual 25-day 818 shopping bonanza last Friday, increasing omni-channel sales by 155% over last year. The festival, which merged online to offline strategies with new smart retail concepts, also saw Suning.com's official retail app take the no.1 download spot for nine consecutive days during the promotion while active user numbers increased 97% over last year, making it the company's most successful shopping festival to date.
"This year's 818 festival was the first to spotlight the advantages of Suning's new smart retail strategy," said Zhang Jindong, chairman of Suning Holdings Group. "Every year, we aim to surpass all previous years, and this year we have achieved a quantum leap, not only in terms of scale but the promotion of our new concept of future retailing and styled living through intelligent solutions, the connection of different consumption scenarios, and customer immersion to achieve an enhanced retail experience."
Highlights of Suning.com's 818 Shopping Festival
The Suning smart retail strategy focuses on a future of retail that leverages advances in new technology and merges different buying scenarios to create innovative online-to-offline experiences for consumers, reviving the high-street and making shopping more interesting and fun. To fulfil the vast number of orders during the 25-day sales event, Suning provided a wide range of delivery options including their pioneering drone and self-driving vehicle service. Retailers and consumers were also able to benefit from Sunings smart financial service, which has saved consumers over 38 million RMB and provided retail partners with over 3 billion RMB in financial services and support.
Throughout the 25-day festival, Suning combined online and offline activities to create immersive experiences for consumers. Their flagship "Spree-topia" event attracted over 60,000 visitors to their pop-up-store and generated over 150 million views online. The company also promoted 818 via its content creation and sharing app, 'The Number 1 Buyer', an online space for consumers to interact with celebrities, share video content and make direct purchases in an entertaining way.
Consumers, online influencers and retailers have embraced the adoption of Suning's new vision of future retail. To date, "The Number 1 Buyer" has 5,000 active celebrities and influencers creating a total of over 80 million topics.
About 818 Shopping Festival
Launched in 2014, Suning's "818 Shopping Festival" is an annual online-to-offline sales event. It features discounts and promotion campaigns across the Group's domestic and international retail channels, including over 5,000 self-operated brick-and-mortar stores and its e-commerce platform Suning.com, which ranks among the top three Chinese B2C platforms with 500 million users.
About Suning
Founded in 1990, Suning Holdings Group (Suning) is one of China's leading commercial enterprises with two public companies in China and Japan. In 2017, Suning ranked second among the top 500 privately-owned enterprises in China with annual sales of US$65.7 billion (RMB 412.95 billion). Following its mission to "Lead the Ecosystem across Industries by Creating An Elite Quality of Life for All", Suning has strengthened and expanded its core business through eight vertical industries: Suning.com, Logistics, Financial Services, Technology, Real Estate, Media & Entertainment, Sports, and Investment, among which Suning.com was listed on the Fortune Global 500.
