Taobao Flash Purchase Surpasses Rivals, Accelerates Double 11 Participation

Taobao Flash Purchase Surpasses Rivals, Accelerates Double 11 Participation

October 15, 2025 19:11:00 Text / Liu Jin Source / Node Finance Taobao Flash Purchase joins the Double 11 promotion camp for the first time this year. Node Finance learned that from October 15 to November 14, users can enter the event page by searching for “Flash Purchase Double 11” to receive over 10 million free order red envelopes, and 88VIP users can get two 50% off red envelopes daily.

However, these promotion details are just the “tip of the iceberg.” Taobao Flash Purchase’s in-depth layout this time is far more than just letting users “participate in activities”—it is redefining the strategic value of instant retail in e-commerce promotions.

Taobao Flash Purchase Has Taken the Lead Unknowingly

For many traditional merchants, the physical location of offline stores naturally limits their customer base. The emergence of Taobao Flash Purchase has greatly expanded merchants’ business radius, making “one store selling to the entire city” a reality.

Leveraging Taobao Flash Purchase’s overall traffic advantages and joint marketing activities for popular products like “Super Popular,” Lucky Cup’s daily orders during the National Day holiday increased by more than 10 times year-on-year, with monthly sequential growth remaining in double digits. Malanji’s average daily orders grew by over 240% year-on-year and nearly 30% month-on-month.

Many time-honored brands have also encountered a “sweet burden” due to Taobao Flash Purchase. The owner of an old pastry shop in Tianjin admitted that online orders were so many that he “wanted to close the store,” but decided to continue operating because takeaway saves customers from queuing. Node Finance learned that after accessing Taobao Flash Purchase, a 30-jin (15kg) plate of pastries, which used to take two days to sell, now sells 20 to 30 plates a day, and offline foot traffic has increased by half. Notably, its turnover and order volume on Taobao Flash Purchase are nearly double those on other platforms, and the doubling of orders has directly driven a significant increase in profits.

This all confirms that Taobao Flash Purchase has successfully shaped the mental perception of “high-frequency consumption” among consumers. In just six months since its full launch in May, the takeaway market pattern has renewed. Third-party data shows that during the peak order period in August, the combined market share of Taobao Flash Purchase and Ele.me once surpassed Meituan—the market showed a tripartite pattern of Taobao Flash Purchase + Ele.me (about 4.5): Meituan Takeaway (about 4.4): JD Takeaway (about 1.1). The competition among takeaway platforms has not only entered a new level but also broken the original single-polar pattern.

Ningji’s store in Shuibei, Shenzhen, was almost “booked” by Taobao Flash Purchase during the National Day holiday. The dense order frequency even gave people the illusion that “lemon tea can be wholesaled.” The clerk said he was busier than the fried chicken guy. According to the clerk, the order reception backend was once “flooded” with Taobao Flash Purchase orders. Platform discounts combined with out-of-town customers increased Ningji’s orders by three to four times during the National Day.

A relevant report from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management points out that the penetration rate of flash purchase business is positively correlated with the average offline weekly revenue of local catering merchants, and no statistical evidence of significant crowding out of dine-in business was found. This indicates that Taobao Flash Purchase does not simply divert offline consumption but effectively helps brands expand the incremental market.

For many emerging and traditional brands, the value of Taobao Flash Purchase has far exceeded a simple “sales channel” and evolved into a core engine driving the brand’s overall growth. In the view of Zhao Gang, founder of Huaxiaoxiao Xinjiang Rice Noodles, takeaway brings not only orders but also widespread brand communication. As Taobao Flash Purchase and other platforms continue to increase subsidies and traffic investment, Huaxiaoxiao has achieved explosive performance: its orders on Ele.me (operated in collaboration with Taobao Flash Purchase) increased by over 100% year-on-year, and growth in key regions such as Shenzhen and Jiangxi even exceeded 200%.

While consolidating the mass market, Taobao Flash Purchase is also making rapid efforts in the segmented track of quality takeaway. “Lai Lai Xiaolong,” a Shanghai restaurant recommended by Michelin Bib Gourmand, is famous for its signature crab roe soup dumplings. Less than two months after launching on Taobao Flash Purchase, its order volume has shown a steady upward trend and has significantly surpassed other similar platforms. On weekdays, the average daily orders are stable at 50 to 80, and on weekends, it easily exceeds 100. Node Finance learned that Taobao Flash Purchase provides a series of key support policies for quality restaurants like Lai Lai Xiaolong, including rate discounts and traffic support, helping them quickly open up the new instant retail market.

Taobao Flash Purchase’s Advantages: Building Certain Growth with a “Growth Triangle”

Buffett has a famous saying: “Many people invest blindly, like playing cards all night without looking at their hands.” In the local life game, some players still rely on “dark cards” of traffic tactics and complex gameplay. However, Taobao Flash Purchase has chosen to show three “bright cards” to continuously leverage its competitive advantages and build growth certainty with a clear path.

Bright Card 1: Brands Bet Heavily—Integrated Online and Offline, Win-Win Across Domains

On September 20, Decathlon announced the deepening of cooperation with Tmall, with 208 stores nationwide fully accessing Tmall’s official flagship store and Taobao Flash Purchase, realizing “same price online and offline, flagship store genuine products delivered in minutes.” Decathlon is one of the earliest brands to cooperate with Tmall in instant retail. By July, Decathlon’s monthly turnover on Taobao Flash Purchase exceeded 10 million yuan, with a month-on-month growth of over 70%. More notably, its growth structure: water sports category surged by 700%, fan and fitness categories grew by over 50%, indicating that instant retail is deeply penetrating from basic needs to professional and interest-based scenarios.

Decathlon is just a microcosm of the collective evolution of brands. In July alone, 395 non-food brands had monthly turnover exceeding one million yuan on Taobao Flash Purchase, and 66 brands exceeded ten million yuan. By September, 260 brand flagship stores, including Midea, Dreame, and Anessa, had fully accessed. Behind this “brand bright card” is a firm judgment of Taobao Flash Purchase: the endgame of instant retail is not a supplementary channel but a core pillar of a brand’s global business.

Bright Card 2: Fulfillment as the Foundation—Everything Delivered to Home, Instantly Obtained

The second bright card played by Taobao Flash Purchase is building rock-solid fulfillment capability, turning “everything delivered to home” from a vision into a daily first choice for users. Alibaba’s Q2 financial report confirms this trend: the second engine of its retail growth comes from the rapid expansion from food delivery to “everything delivered to home.”

Taking Bestseller Group as an example, its e-commerce director revealed that about 30% of Taobao Flash Purchase orders come from instant needs such as business travel emergencies; “off-season purchases” even occur in tourist areas—tourists feel cold in the mountains and immediately order thick clothes. Similarly, snack consumption has shifted from “planned stockpiling” to “instant pleasure.” Within four months of accessing Taobao Flash Purchase, Liangpinpuzi’s order volume increased by 285% year-on-year, and the proportion of new customers increased by 51.2%. When “30-minute delivery” becomes the standard, consumer mentality upgrades from “waiting for delivery” to “enjoying immediately.” This “fulfillment bright card” has evolved Taobao Flash Purchase from delivering food to delivering a lifestyle.

Bright Card 3: Ecological Synergy—Activating Platform Growth Flywheel

In the Q2 financial report analysis, Jiang Fan, CEO of Taotian Group, clearly stated the strategic value of Taobao Flash Purchase for the first time, pointing out that it “significantly drives the scale and activity of Taobao users” and will continue to drive e-commerce-side revenue in the long term. Specifically, Taobao Flash Purchase drove a 20% increase in Taobao’s DAU in August, and the increase in traffic further boosted advertising and customer management revenue (CMR), while enhancing user stickiness, attracting new users and preventing churn, reducing customer acquisition and retention costs for the platform.

Node Finance believes that these three bright cards together form a solid “growth triangle”: the richness of brand supply attracts and meets users’ instant needs; the ultimate fulfillment experience strengthens user trust and stickiness; the growth of users and traffic, in turn, feeds back into the platform ecosystem, empowering brands to achieve greater growth. This cycle of mutual enhancement has accumulated solid momentum for Taobao Flash Purchase’s Double 11 explosion.

This Double 11, Taobao Flash Purchase Activates the “Vitality” of the Real Economy

The value of a business model lies in its explosive power in the short term and its vitality in the long term. As the “new ammunition” for this year’s Double 11, the profound significance of instant retail is to make the real economy re-recognize the true value of “online-offline integration”—it is no longer a one-way online traffic output but a systematic activation of the offline business ecosystem.

For the majority of physical merchants, Taobao Flash Purchase has promoted physical stores from a single sales terminal to an “intelligent front warehouse” integrating inventory, experience, and instant fulfillment. This transformation has helped various physical operators (from chain brands to street-side shops) achieve a double jump in operational efficiency and market coverage. Node Finance learned that during this year’s Golden Week, milk tea orders in Chengdu increased by 180% year-on-year. In old streets like Jiaochangba East Street, many local milk tea shops have extended their products from serving the surrounding area to covering the entire city through Taobao Flash Purchase. Tourists do not need to visit the store in person; they can easily order authentic Chengdu flavors in their hotels, realizing “lying in the hotel and drinking all of Chengdu.” The owner of a small shop called “Cha Chao Milk Tea” shared: “We usually serve regular customers in office buildings, but takeaway orders increased significantly during the holiday. We just launched takeaway this year, and the order volume increase brought by Taobao Flash Purchase is very obvious.”

In Qingdao, it rained for the first three days of the Golden Week. The special snack shop Dao Jiangjia Zhizha on Taidong Pedestrian Street saw a 200% increase in Taobao Flash Purchase orders, with more tourists choosing to take away specialty foods to their hotels. On the first day of National Day, more than 3,000 jin (1,500kg) of raw meat was prepared, and half of the store’s employees were responsible for takeaway packaging.

Research from Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management further confirms this trend. The report shows that this year, flash purchase coupons have a significant pull effect on the offline revenue of small and micro merchants, with an increase rate of 44.5%. A five-year survey by Peking University also found that against the backdrop of “insufficient market demand” becoming the main challenge for small and micro operators, digital platforms are increasingly becoming a key help for them to solve problems such as difficulty in acquiring customers and high traffic costs.

The prosperity of new business formats ultimately returns to solid social value. Not long ago, the Taobao Flash Purchase team changed into new work clothes that are fashionable and windproof and rainproof, which were jokingly called “F1 racing suits” by netizens—this is not only a brand symbol but also a new interpretation of Taobao Flash Purchase’s changes by the outside world: the business model evolves quickly and practitioners grow quickly. Data shows that Taobao Flash Purchase’s daily active riders exceeded 2 million in August, creating more than one million new jobs compared to the same period last year. At the same time, riders’ income levels have significantly increased: the number of riders with income exceeding 10,000 yuan in July was 2.8 times that of last year. While achieving double growth in scale and income, Taobao Flash Purchase, together with Ele.me, has comprehensively improved riders’ work and life quality from every detail.

Conclusion

Taobao Flash Purchase’s participation in Double 11 may be another “acceleration race” in its development. As the competition in the takeaway market moves from the first half of pursuing “traffic dividends” to the second half of “efficiency competition,” Taobao Flash Purchase, with its certain advantage “bright cards,” will continue to open up growth paths for all-category merchants, create a more efficient and dynamic business ecosystem, and ultimately, renew the industry pattern once again.

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