Health Emerges as New Growth Engine on Tmall's Double 11, Surpassing RMB 100 Million in Sales Within 145 Seconds

Over RMB 100 million in sales within the first 145 seconds! Medical aesthetics transactions surpassed the full-day total of last year in just 10 hours and 31 minutes! Overall sales exceeded last year’s full-day total in 11 hours and 9 minutes! Five brands joined the RMB 100-million sales club… Such was the performance of Tmall Medicine, encompassing health products and medical services, during the recently concluded Tmall Double 11 shopping festival. As widely anticipated by various sectors, the health industry has emerged as a dark horse, becoming a new engine for growth during Double 11.

The Double 11 shopping festival has long been regarded as the industry’s “barometer” and “proving ground.” During this year’s event, health-related products and services repeatedly took center stage. Throughout the full day of Double 11, Swisse, By-Health, Bausch + Lomb, Yan Palace, and Xiao Xian Dun successively joined the club of brands with gross merchandise value exceeding RMB 100 million.

The “surge” of the health industry is underpinned by profound intrinsic logic. A report jointly released last year by Alibaba, CBNData (First Financial Commercial Data Center), and DT Finance indicated that the pharmaceutical and healthcare sector recorded the fastest growth over the past five years. Additionally, authoritative institutions have pointed out that China’s general health market generated revenues of RMB 5.4 trillion in 2018, is projected to reach RMB 7.4 trillion in 2022, and is expected to surpass RMB 16 trillion by 2030.

“As ducks are the first to know when the spring river warms,” the vast health market has attracted enthusiastic participation from players across various industries, as evidenced by the active entry of health-related merchants during this year’s Double 11 shopping festival. Data disclosed by Alibaba Health shows that the number of participating merchants was 1.7 times that of last year, while the number of products included in the promotions reached 1.78 times the level of the same period last year. Meanwhile, the entry of nearly 4,000 new brands, including Allergan and Xinsheng, injected considerable vitality into this year’s Double 11 event.

In addition, new ecosystem players have been joining the fold. For instance, health-focused merchants such as Dong-E-E-Jiao and Bairuiyuan have established “Tmall Liaison Offices” near Alibaba’s Hangzhou campus to facilitate timely communication and coordination. Meanwhile, to promote local specialties, heads of several poverty-stricken counties began live-streaming e-commerce sales well before the Double 11 shopping festival, drawing widespread attention. The entry of celebrities, including Olympic gymnastics champion Liu Xuan, who opened stores on the Ali Health platform, further underscores the booming demand in the health market from another perspective.

In addition to the aforementioned “new faces,” the launch of new products further underscores participants’ enthusiasm for the Double 11 shopping festival. Our observations reveal that innovative offerings—such as chewable goji berries, meal-replacement milkshakes, and ready-to-drink donkey-hide gelatin (ejiao) beverages—have captured the interest of a large number of young consumers, effectively “planting the seed” of purchase intent. Taking ready-to-drink ejiao beverages as an example, consumers born in the 1990s and 2000s account for more than 60% of the customer base.

Smart health products, such as Abbott’s blood glucose meters, Omron’s all-in-one blood pressure monitors, Sivantos’ remote-fitting hearing aids, and Tmall Genie’s Lu Xiaojia, have been enthusiastically embraced by consumers. Notably, the year-on-year growth in transaction volume for Abbott’s blood glucose meters reached a remarkable 341%. The trends toward younger demographics and intelligent features in health consumption were more vividly demonstrated during this year’s Double 11 shopping festival.

Meanwhile, the unexpected surge in popularity of certain new product categories reveals intriguing underlying trends. For instance, within the first three minutes of the Double 11 shopping festival, Voolga’s medical-grade facial masks generated gross merchandise value (GMV) exceeding the entire previous day’s total; during the first hour, Hydran, Bausch + Lomb, and Shike Glasses broke into the top ten merchants by GMV, driven by substantial sales of contact lenses.

Unlike previous public perceptions of Tmall’s Double 11 as primarily a sales-driven event, the sustained popularity of various health-related services during this year’s Double 11 signals a new trend toward service-oriented development in the health industry. For instance, during this Double 11 period, Ali Health partnered with Alipay to officially launch an online appointment service for nighttime dental clinics in 22 cities across China, receiving widespread acclaim from young white-collar workers who struggle to find time for dental care during daytime hours.

For another example, Helie Flagship Store, a medical aesthetics merchant on Alibaba Health, launched a new Tmall Double 11 exclusive product—the “Two-Year Annual Pass for Full-Face Wrinkle Reduction.” On the first day of pre-sales, October 21, it sold nearly 2,000 units, with single-product sales revenue exceeding RMB 3.7 million.

In fact, medical services—including aesthetic medicine, dentistry, health check-ups, and vaccinations—have also emerged as stars of this year’s Double 11 shopping festival. Within the first 10 minutes of the event, two aesthetic medicine merchants already surpassed their full-day transaction volumes from the previous year. Moreover, several brands specializing in health check-ups and dental services ranked among the top 10 in Tmall Health’s full-day transaction volume list.

As another representative of new health services, during this year’s Tmall Double 11 Shopping Festival, Ali Health collaborated with nearly 5,000 O2O new-retail pharmacies across approximately 150 cities in China to participate in the event. During the promotional period, Ali Health’s O2O order volume reached 2.65 times that of the same period last year.

In terms of the all-day sales rankings among partner pharmacies, by the time Tmall’s Double 11 shopping festival concluded at midnight on the 11th, chain pharmacies such as Guizhou Yishu Chain Pharmacy, Tianji Grand Pharmacy, and Shuyu Pingmin Grand Pharmacy ranked among the top ten in order volume.