Alibaba gathers more than $14B in sales on China’s ‘Singles’ Day’

Sales reached $9.3 billion for the day last year – the first time the event was expanded globally – up 60 percent year-on-year, the company’s figures showed. With sales hitting new highs year after year, “Singles Day” has become a lucrative business opportunity embraced by all online retailers in China, with competition between them turning increasingly fierce. On November 10, Chinese e-retailer Alibaba announced that its own merchandise sales had exceeded $1 billion within the event’s first eight minutes, beginning at midnight Beijing time.

It may not have a lot of meaning to those of us living in the western world, but Singles Day is a big deal in China and is often thought of as their version of Black Friday.

 Huge demand from China caused a shortage of premium organic baby milk formula in Australia. The transaction will generate $400 in terms of GMV even though the final transaction indicates the customer spent a total of $100.

The day, which was initially celebrated by university students as a sort of “Anti-Valentine’s Day” for those without a romantic partner, has quickly morphed into the biggest shopping day in the world.

Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates ALIBABA GROUP HLDG as a Sell with a ratings score of D+. “Last year, we handled a record-breaking 80,000 orders at peak per second at peak”.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. said the total value of goods transacted during its Singles’ Day shopping festival was 91.2 billion yuan ($14.32 billion).

Indeed, since it’s the e-commerce site started promoting it in 2009 Singles Day has grown substantially, with more than 40,000 merchants and 30,000 brands from 25 countries selling their wares on its platforms.

Chief executive Daniel Zhang said parts of this year’s event were being tailored to the growth area of mobile retail.

Over the years, the day has exploded in popularity.

Surging retail sales have been a bright spot in China’s recent growth story with factory output growth slowing.