Singles Day purchases at Alibaba platforms, affiliates top $14bn

This year, within the first half hour, Alibaba said it had $3 billion in sales.

This year’s Singles Day sale is critical for the Chinese company as it was under vast pressure from investors after its stock price declined by about 40% in the 12 months since its $21.8bn listing in NY last year.

Taking place on the 11th of November, it’s been revealed that this year’s shopping spree generated $5 billion for e-commerce giant Alibaba in the first 90 minutes of Singles Day going live – the same amount that Americans spent online last year on Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

Top-selling items included baby-related and nutritional products, Nike sneakers and Levi’s jeans, the company said.

This year it was kicked off by a 4-hour long show on a nationally distributed TV channel that included appearances by worldwide stars from Asia and the West, including James Bond actor Daniel Craig and a video message from Kevin Spacey, as his Jack Underwood character from the Netflix show “House of Cards”.

“China is a huge marketplace with close to one billion intelligent connected apparatus users – this is a great news for both Alibaba and their opponents”, she said. To put that into perspective, Australians spent about $2.1 billion over the entire 2014 Boxing Day sales period. The sales surpassed the last year’s record of $9.3 bn in a short span of time.

The Singles’ Day sales have helped Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) reach over $14.32 billion (91.2 billion yuan) in sales over the course of the festival. The event is also referred to as “Singles Day”. JD.com (JD – Get Report), a longtime rival of Alibaba, is also capitalizing on Singles Day this year with its own sales and promotions.

Many consumers told dpa that they had been waiting for Singles Day to make their purchases.

“The whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption this November 11”, he said in a statement.

Back in 2009, e-commerce giant Alibaba started to offer deals on its online shopping platforms on Singles Day, using it as an excuse for self-gifting and indulgence. The sales figures indicate the massive online shopping market in China.

Following this year’s event, economists will be looking for clues about Chinese domestic consumption in Wednesday’s sales as the world’s second-biggest economy head for the slowest growth in almost a quarter of a century.