China’s Singles Day Smashes Sales Record

On November 11, 2014, Chinese consumers spent $9 billion in online sales, up from $5.75 billion on November 11, 2013, and $3.1 billion in 2012.

The United States, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Australia were the top overseas options for online shoppers, with beauty balms, thermometers and tampons the three most popular products. According to the BBC, the event started in 2009 and has become a trend that it is now emulated by other shopping platforms in China.

Alibaba also surpassed the total sales that took place in the US on Cyber Monday previous year in just minutes.

Jack Ma, executive chairman of Alibaba, said the Singles Day represents only a small part of the huge potential for domestic demand in China.

And this year’s Singles Day kicked off in style. Shen is CEO of JD Mall, JD.com’s business-to-consumer group. This year the event has even received support from the government at time when China’s economy is slowing down. The company processed a record $9 billion in sales by midday Wednesday local time, Bloomberg reports. Additionally, as of 2:00 PM CST, the e-commerce giant recorded more than 70 million mobile purchasers. “You’re standing next to somebody on the subway, but you don’t realize they’re dropping about $500 on Singles Day sales on their phone”, said Zakkour, author of China’s Super Consumers.

As 16,000 brands participated in the mega sale, 1.7 million couriers, 4 lakh vehicles and 200 planes will be delivering products.

Aside from the shopping spree that increased local sales on Single’s Day, foreign companies are now actively participating in these sales. By 6 pm, customers also had ordered 2.20 lakh Xiaomi smartphones, 3.80 lakh boxes of Durex condoms and almost the same number of mobile power chargers, said Suning group. The event is branded by the company as a Global Shopping Festival and stocks a variety of foreign items in addition to those already available in the local market.