China’s Singles Day, by the numbers

Alibaba started the “11.11 Global Shopping Festival” six years ago to leverage the fledgling tradition, but with much smaller ambitions – to raise awareness of online shopping in China.

“It also showcases how Alibaba uses big data, cloud computing, and mobile innovations to create the best shopping experience for buyers and sellers”, he said.

The distribution operation behind such an event is nearly mind-boggling. Meanwhile, JD.com reported 74% of total orders were placed via mobile platforms, including JD.com’s native app, and through Tencent’s WeChat and Mobile QQ platforms, the increasingly popular social media platforms of choice among China’s growing population of mobile users.

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.

Comparatively, Americans spent just $1.5 billion online on last year’s Black Friday, the Friday before Thanksgiving, one of the biggest sales days of the year in the U.S.

This made it the largest shopping day in history, as it clocked a 60 percent increase in sales compared to 2014. In all, the Singles Day will generate 760 million dollars in shipments, according to government figures. Then in 2009 Alibaba got involved and turned it into a massive online shopping extravaganza, and, as we can see, it’s working out just fine for the Hangzhou-based company. Alipay, one of China’s leading online payment systems, processed 710 million transactions yesterday, at a rate of 140,000 transactions per second. It’s trying to extend the sales to foreign markets while opening up China to Western brands like Zara, Estee Lauder and Burberry.

The average daily delivery order for Alibaba’s partner and affiliate in logistics Cainiao is 30 million a day.

James Bond actor Daniel Craig and Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma appear during Tuesday night’s TV gala promoting the event.

Special offers for Singles’ Day included a reduced price on its new Redmi Note 2 smartphone. “Within the next five years, we expect China will become the world’s largest e-commerce market for imported products”, President Michael Evans told reporters.