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Bigger than Black Friday: Coronavirus outbreak overwhelms shopping agents with online mask orders

Delivery companies that help customers ship overseas purchases are seeing a surge in face mask purchases

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People wait in line to purchase protective masks at a store in Hong Kong on January 29. (Picture: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)
Karen Chiu
This article originally appeared on ABACUS

Black Friday is usually one of the busiest times of the year for Hong Kong’s online shopping agents, which help people send back internet purchases from overseas for a fee. But the new coronavirus outbreak has spurred a surge in orders unmatched by what’s typically seen during the post-Thanksgiving shopping bonanza, according to one company.

“This week’s merchandise volume and inquiries have skyrocketed all of a sudden,” wrote Hong Kong logistics company Buyandship in a Facebook post. “It’s a few times more than the annual Black Friday shopping season.”
The company says over the past week, it helped clients ship home around 15,000 boxes of face masks from around the world, equivalent to an estimated 7.5 million individual masks. On Thursday, it asked customers not to mail more purchases to its warehouse in Japan, which has “exceeded its maximum capacity.”
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People wait in line to purchase protective masks at a store in Hong Kong on January 29. (Picture: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)
People wait in line to purchase protective masks at a store in Hong Kong on January 29. (Picture: Paul Yeung/Bloomberg)
The new coronavirus, which originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan, has set off a scramble for masks across the country. While mainland shopping sites such as JD.com and Alibaba’s Taobao have vowed to freeze the price of masks sold on their platforms, stock appears to be running low.
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A search for the term “mask” on Taobao yields a message that says masks are being “prioritized for disease-fighting efforts on the frontline” and are therefore in short supply. On JD.com, most listings for surgical masks are marked as “preorder” and not available for immediate purchase.

(Abacus is a unit of the South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba.)

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