When the clock struck midnight, Singles Day which is China's shopping sale, has come to an end. The time for companies that involved to count sales and profit. It was a big day for e-commerce services, and there isn't any that is as big as Alibaba.
As a start, Alibaba moved the opening gala from the company's Hangzhou headquarters in eastern China to the country's capital city Beijing, where its biggest rival, e-commerce platform JD, is based.
Alibaba's Daniel Zhang had said in a statement that the event would mean "the whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption". He promised consumers "a new surprise every hour" over the day's 24-hour marathon sale, especially mobile users.
When the day ended, the stats came up. Alibaba is up for its words, and it came up surprisingly phenomenal. According to the company, Alibaba raked in $14.32 billion in sales, a step up from 2014's $9.3 billion.
Below is list of some stat numbers on 2015's Singles Day:
- 80 percent of share of China's total online shopping market are held by Alibaba.
- 120,000 estimated orders are processed by Alibaba each minute.
- 73 percent of purchases in the first hour were made through mobile phones.
- 12 hours for Alibaba to beat its 2014's whole-day record.
- $4 billion worth of goods coming from 27 million purchases in one hour after the even't opening. $5 billion in sales in the first 90 minutes.
- 710 million payments were handled by Alibaba's payment service Alipay, with a peak rate of nearly 86,000 payments per second.
- 140,000 transactions per second at its peak were made on Alicloud, Alibaba's cloud service.
- 467 million delivery orders were done by Alibaba logistics arm Cainiao.
- The total transactions recorded, measured by gross merchandise value (GMV), reached.
- 232 different countries were its buyers and sellers came from.
- More than 16,000 different international brands sold at least one item.
- An estimated of 1.7 million couriers, 400,000 vehicles and 200 planes made the deliveries.
The results are preliminary and unaudited. But they are indeed a record-breaking stats if compared to 2014's Singles Day. They exceeded analyst estimates.
Singles Day which is China's largest shopping event, is also seen as one of the world's biggest sales. The day that is China's equivalent of the U.S. shopping event Cyber Monday, has become larger than both Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined. As a matter of fact, a single Chinese company Alibaba, outnumbered the stats than span all online U.S. retail companies.
"This is a great day and it symbolizes the great power of China's domestic consumption," said Alibaba's founder Jack Ma, addressing reporters ahead of the release of the final sales.
Economy is Slowing, Boosting Sales
In the global economic slowdown, Asia is one out of several others that is the most effect. Inflation is down, dropping non-food prices to 0.3 percent in October. That time, China reported that the economy in the third-quarter plummeted to its slowest pace since the global financial crisis
The moment obviously indicates the falling number of consumption in China.
Many people are aware of this problem, and for that it's common for them to hold their desires to spend until the time is right. Singles Day is when many goods are on sale for a fraction of their original price, and at that moment, it's common to think that the day is when people can save money while spending for the things they want.
The thoughts that were in many people's mind changed the fact. On Singles Day, China reported that retail sales rose a better-than-expected 11 percent in October, higher than September's 10.9 percent growth. This is also helped by China's per capita disposable income that rose 7.7 percent in the first nine months from a 2014, outpacing a 6.9 percent rise in gross domestic product.
Singles Day was originally meant to be a mock celebration for those that are not in relationship. Held every year on November 11th, the day is also referred to as "Double Eleven" because of its date (11/11). But Alibaba started promoting the day as consumption event for everyone starting 2009 by featuring steep discounts and other promotions aimed at attracting customers online.
As the largest online commerce in China, and one of the biggest in the world, Alibaba's sales data have been closely watched as a gauge of Chinese consumption as economic growth slows.
In the days leading up to the event, Alibaba hosted a four-hour TV variety show which featured local Chinese celebrities and Western entertainers such as British actor Daniel Craig and American actor Kevin Spacey.
Speaking at the company's Singles' Day celebration in Beijing, Jack Ma told reporters that the event's annual growth in the future should be over 50 percent. Ma said he thought the coming months were likely to be challenging for China’s economy but the longer-term prospects were still remaining strong, particularly in terms of consumption.
"Of course, we believe the next 5, 10 months, China's economy might have big problems. it is a bumpy time," but the economy will be better over the next 15 years, he said.
Many other retailers, including Alibaba's closest rival JD, are also powering up their sales promotion for that day only. JD said it recorded more than 20 million orders by after half a day passed, with 6 million more orders than the total of last year's. But Unlike Alibaba, JD doesn't release figures for the total value of merchandise sold on its shopping site on Singles Day.