Single’s Day an example of China consumer demand: Alibaba’s Jack Ma

As of midnight in China, sales through Alibaba hit $14.3 billion.

Alibaba’s e-commerce competitors have launched their own 11.11 sales events in recent years, trying to capitalize on the shopping bonanza. After the first 90 minutes, that number had swelled to $5 billion.

The money spent on the Chinese day to celebrate being single dwarf the U.S. flagship day of online discounts, Cyber Monday, which only registered sales of $1.35bn previous year.

This is the second year Alibaba has been promoting the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival globally, and the 2015 festival is “the most worldwide (sale) yet”, Evans said.

But Alibaba became the first major company to monetize on the occasion of this holiday by launching a special online sale in 2009 that transformed the day into a shopping phenomenon.

Weeks ahead of today’s massive online shopping event in China, Australian parents who use a homegrown organic baby formula called Bellamy’s started to notice that local stores where running out of the company’s products.

According to research firm IDC, this year’s sales could rise to as much as $13.8 billion, a growth of nearly 50% from last year’s total.

Sales for the Hangzhou-headquartered company during Singles Day in 2014 grossed just over $9bn and the company is on track to beat the figure this year.

This year, Singles Day is expected to smash through those records.

The government has been trying to push the economy towards services and consumption away from traditional mainstays such as manufacturing as part of its efforts to create China’s “New Normal”.

Singles’ Day in China began as a clever counter to Valentine’s Day. Halfway through the day the previous year’s record was eclipsed.

The global leader in fresh and dehydrated cranberry production, as well as juices, is participating in the Global Shopping Festival prepared by Alibaba for the Singles’ Day in the Asian country on November 11., the the largest single e-commerce day in the world.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s office phoned Alibaba chairman Jack Ma hours ahead of the promotion kicking off, “congratulating and encouraging the creation and achievement of the 11.11 event”, said a posting on a social media account of Tmall, the group’s business-to-consumer arm.

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