China’s Alibaba says Singles Day sales nearly $8 bn in 10 hours

Elsewhere, JD.com, a Chinese online direct sales company, said it saw a 130% increase in order during the Singles’ Day and a rise in GMV of 140% compared with past year.

Jack Ma kicks off Singles Day in China.

Alibaba just smashed sales records for China’s Singles Day, netting £9.4bn in sales in just 24 hours.

 In comparison, Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day on the U.S. calendar, netted $1.35 billion, according to the data analytics firm ComScore. Alibaba rang up $5 billion in sales within the first 90 minutes. Read what consumers and experts are saying about the online shopping event on social media.

Cainiao Logistics, the logistics affiliate of Alibaba Group, received 310 million delivery orders as of 2 p.m. China time, exceeding the 278 million orders generated during the entire day of November 11, 2014.

By midday, that amount had crossed US$9 billion, equalling Alibaba’s take for the whole day previous year. This means that by the time Alibaba reached last year’s total, there was almost 10 hours of shopping left in the sales event. IDC projects $13.7 billion worth of sales for Singles’ Day.

This year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival features more than six million products from more than 30,000 brands sold by over 40,000 merchants. In an Interview with Fortune magazine, Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang said this year’s Double Eleven online shopping event will be the most worldwide yet.

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

The latest industrial output statistics from China overnight show manufacturing output rose by just 5.6% year on year to the end of October – that’s lower than the 5.8% expected and further evidence that the world’s second largest economy is slowing. That record held until yesterday, when shoppers across China purchased everything from electric razors to new refrigerators online through the e-commerce giant.