618 Much of the Issuer’s activities during the period was spent gearing up for this year’s “618 Shopping Festival”. Better known in China simply as “618”, the event was started by online retail giant JD.com in 2004 as a way to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of the company (June 18, 1998) by offering consumers promotional deals on a variety of products. 618 has since seen virtually all online stores and marketplaces in China offer promotional deals on that date, making the event the country’s biggest shopping extravaganza along with “Single’s Day”. 618 now usually accounts for a significant portion of China’s online retailers’ annual sales. JD.com, for example, reported sales of USD$38B for 618 in 2020. By comparison, Cyber Monday 2020, which included the combined sales of all US online retailers, generated sales of USD$10.7B, making it the biggest shopping day in US history. As the retailer and distributor financing programs recently launched by the Issuer could potentially provide retailers and distributors with the cash flow flexibility that many lacked during 618 in the past, the Issuer spent time during the period to promote the programs and worked with the financial institution members of its Lending Hub to ensure that they would be in position to meet whatever financing demand is created by 618.
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