I bought a thing or two during Lazada’s 9.9 Big Discover Sale, and it looks like millions did the same, too. In fact, Lazada Malaysia, thanks to you lot, completely obliterated last year’s full day sales tally in just two hours. Two hours.
The e-commerce platform reported a sales volume increase of over 3x compared to the previous year, with a monumental 500,000 items sold in the first two hours alone.
“We are once again overwhelmed by the support received from Malaysians during this Lazada 9.9 Big Discovery Sale. To celebrate our 9.9 first anniversary, we wanted to offer our customers the chance to experience as much of the Lazada’s features and offers as possible, by enabling them to Discover more and the results have been staggering,” said Leo Chow, Chief Executive Officer of Lazada Malaysia.
“This 9.9 we strived to create more visibility on the assortment of the best deals, allow more time for Discovery through Chup Dulu, and collect more rewards while enjoying our innovative and immersive Shoppertainment highlights such as GUESS IT and LazGames. We look forward to our customers receiving their purchased Discoveries which are fulfilled through our industry leading logistics, payment and technology ecosystem.”
Lazada said that at its peak, shoppers were making more than 4,600 purchases per minute, with over 14x more customers using their Lazada Wallet over the 24-hour period.
Going cashless makes sense, and Lazada offers exclusive cashback and discounts when customers use the Lazada Wallet as the main mode of payment.
The platform’s top sellers saw a sales boost of nearly 340 percent versus the same period last year.
Among the categories that showed the most substantial growth include Home Appliances (over 3x), Fashion (over 3x), Groceries (over 7x), and Digital Goods. Mobile top ups were also incredibly popular (over 8x). Other popular categories include online to offline food and beverage vouchers, insurance, travel, and hotel packages. Malaysians sure love their KFC, Tony Roma’s, and Baskin Robbins ice-cream, popular meal voucher choices.
In the Mobile and Tablets category, Apple’s Flagship Store raked in a month’s worth of sales in just 24 hours. And this was before the big iPhone 11 launch in the US.
With smart shoppers and bargain hunters scouring the Lazada app, it was no surprise that certain items would sell out quickly. Among the first items to sell out in the first second of the sale were the Dyson Air Multiplier Tower Fan (obviously spurred by the current haze situation), Toshiba 32-inch HD LED TV, and HETCH Cordless Dual Battery Vacuum Cleaner. Also, all stocks of Preeto Spaghetti (what, really?), ILVE V55 Pro Robot Vacuum Cleaner sold out within the first five minutes. Stocks of Fernleaf Full Cream milk, Wetty Wet Wipes, MAGGI 2-min Curry and Lactogrow 3 BIB milk formula, were gone within 40 minutes. Malaysians stocking up on supplies, I suppose.
Baby stuff, as usual, was popular—Malaysian shoppers bought over 70,000kg of baby milk formula, which is covered under Lazada’s Milk Formula Guarantee Programme. That aside, more than 10 million pieces of diapers flew off the shelves in 24 hours, 1 million of which were pre-ordered (smart!) through Lazada’s Chup Dulu pre-sale feature.
Chup Dulu enables you to put down a deposit to secure products at great discounts ahead of sale day.
It wasn’t all shopping all the way during sales day; Lazada’s Shoppertainment highlights provides entertainment for shoppers in-app. The popular GUESS IT livestream show starring personalities Sean Lee, Nabil Adil, and Theebaan G, returned for a second run after a successful pilot during the Lazada Mid-Year Sale. It garnered 25 percent more participants for 6-8 September. Players who participated in the show were tasked to guess the closest price (in the quickest time) and the winners received credits directly in their Lazada Wallets. There was also a snowball element to the game, where the more viewers joined the livestream, the bigger the rewards.
What’s incredible was that these Discoveries were fulfilled by Lazada’s leading first to last mile logistics capabilities, with the first parcel getting shipped out of one of Lazada’s eight warehouses before 12.30AM. The first order, confirmed at 12.01AM was delivered to a customer in Petaling Jaya on the same day at 8.46AM by Lazada eLogistics Express (LEX). At its peak, Lazada eLogistics (LeL) employees were packing over 12,000 items per hour. No laughing matter, indeed.
Check out the infographic below:
