Alibaba records $14.3B in ‘Singles Day’ sales, breaking record

According to Alibaba, it was just eight minutes past midnight when the sale officially started, around $1 billion was already spent by customers.

By midday, that amount had crossed US$9 billion, equalling Alibaba’s take for the whole day a year ago.

Alibaba has stressed its focus on global e-commerce this Singles’ Day.

“Compared with slow and sapping consumption in North America, Europe and even Japan and the Republic of Korea, China’s domestic consumption market is huge, and online shopping power is really a gold mine”, said Zhang Yi, CEO of IImedia Research, which analyzes online commerce data.

The company noted that it surpassed last year’s $9.3 billion total with 14 hours still remaining in the sales event. This month, JD.com lodged a complaint with Chinese regulators saying Alibaba was “forcing merchants” to exclusively choose its site for promotional activities, a fact Alibaba denies.

November 11, known as the Singles” Day in China in the “90s, was created by young singles as an excuse to buy themselves presents.

James Bond actor Daniel Craig and Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma appear during Tuesday night’s TV gala promoting the event. E-commerce transactors got busy on the annual Singles Day which fell on Wednesday. To put that in perspective, USA shoppers bought $2 billion worth of goods online last Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving that was the biggest US online shopping day in 2014. It was invented in the 1990’s as sort of an anti-Valentine’s Day, encouraging single citizens to sooth their lonely hearts through retail therapy. Alibaba’s delivery partner Cainiao Logistics reportedly handled 467m delivery orders during the 24-hour shopping period – with its infrastructure coping with more than 15 times the average order load.

Alibaba featured 6 million products by 30,000 brands.

More than 8,000 craftsmen participated in this year’s event, leading to substantial growth in orders from beauty services like manicures and hair dressing.