E-commerce giant Taobao launched its 2025 Double 11 Global Shopping Festival on Wednesday, upgrading both online and offline services in Hong Kong amid fierce competition with e-commerce platforms.

For cross-border online sales, it extended zero-threshold free shipping to about 1 billion small-sized products to Hong Kong. 

Pei Xi, head of Taobao Tmall Hong Kong, said that the “zero-threshold free shipping for single-item purchases” program, trialed in August, has significantly boosted order volumes by attracting many new users to online shopping.

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As a result, Taobao Hong Kong will make it a long-term offer, with the number of “zero shipping fee” products during this year’s Double 11 event in Hong Kong expected to reach into the billions.  

Pei noted that this free shipping initiative will cover the vast majority of small and lightweight items, with over HK$1 billion ($128.65 million) allocated in subsidies.

Major e-commerce platforms on the Chinese mainland — JD, Alibaba’s Taobao and Pinduoduo — are all increasing their presence in Hong Kong, setting the stage for this year’s Double 11 event, though they are leaning toward the offline market here.

Last year, JD announced a HK$1.5 billion investment to strengthen its presence in Hong Kong, including subsidies for product pricing, logistics, and service optimization. In mid-August this year, JD completed its acquisition of Hong Kong-based supermarket chain Kai Bo Food and announced plans to open a JD Mall physical store in Hong Kong by 2026.

Taobao opened its first offline furniture store Papa Home in Hong Kong in February. According to Stephen Leung, the co-founder and chief operating officer of Papa Home, it has served more than 500,000 customers so far, with order values ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of Hong Kong dollars. The manager estimated that the number of merchants will expand from the current 100+ to over 1,000, while the product volume will grow from 10,000 items to more than 100,000.  

Pei said that Taobao’s future focus in Hong Kong will remain on cross-border e-commerce. However, given the maturity of Hong Kong’s offline retail sector, Taobao plans to deepen its integration with local brick-and-mortar stores.  

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“The e-commerce penetration rate in Hong Kong is only 16 to 18 percent, which is significantly lower than the 40 to 50 percent in the Chinese mainland,” Pei said. She added that the offline business intends focusing on categories that require a stronger physical experience, such as automotive products in partnership with local car-service stores.

In addition, Taobao Hong Kong will launch an English version of its platform and support payments via Octopus cards.

Contact the writer at akirawang@chinadailyhk.com