A decade ago, November 11th was just a tongue-in-cheek cultural celebration of single people in China. It was in 2009 that retailer Alibaba turned the day into the country’s version of Black Friday.
And in 2017, sales from the Chinese e-commerce's one-day event has nearly doubled those from Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. combined.
Alibaba reported that sales from Singles’ Day amounted to $25.3 billion, or a 40 percent jump from last year’s figures.
Market research experts say the massive growth is attributed to retailers competing for a share of consumer spending in China’s growing economy. In comparison, U.S. sales between Thanksgiving until Cyber Monday accounted for $12.8 billion in 2016.
In holidays, Alibaba offered discounts on a variety of goods, from household items to electronic gadgets to clothing to beauty supplies.
To honor the event, Alibaba founder Jack Ma held a gala to celebrate its kickoff, inviting celebrities like Pharrell, Nicole Kidman, Jessie J, and Maria Sharapova.
It was televised on both Alibaba’s video service and on three Chinese TV networks. Ahead of the event, the retailer also outfitted nearly 100,000 of its Tmall stores across China with facial recognition technology to process payments.
In just the first 3 minutes, Alibaba raked in $1 billion in sales. 97 percent of sales made on the site in the first 30 seconds were from mobile devices. By the forty-minute mark, the site’s sales had surpassed $7.5 billion. Additionally, the retailer has also hit a record $18 billion in just 13 hours, eclipsing last year’s record of $17.8 billion in 24 hours.
Alibaba processed 325,000 orders per second at peak. Alipay processed 1.5 billion payment transactions in total.
Over 140,000 brands and merchants, 60,000 of which were international, took part in Tmall’s shopping extravaganza, offering 15 million product listings to consumers. And more brands than ever stepped up digital efforts to increase customer engagement.