The China based ecommerce giant Alibaba, said on Saturday (11 November, 2017,) its Single’s Day broke all records by hitting $ 25.4 billion! This record amount broke all records set by Alibaba last year and has now established this ecommerce brand as the leading online shopping platform.
Once a celebration for China’s lonely hearts, Singles’ Day has become an annual 24 hour buying frenzy that exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States and acts as a barometer for China’s consumers. The event kicked off at midnight and a deluge of pre orders helped drive a billion dollars worth of sales.
In the first two minutes, sales hit the roof which led Alibaba to record $ 10 billion dollars in just the first hour! Sales kept rising higher and at the halfway mark, Alibaba recorded $ 18 billion, sweeping past 2016’s record with a vengeance.
The event got shoppers around China scouting for sales and bargains, while delivery executives and robots geared up for an exciting day ahead! Alibaba converted over 100,000 locations into smart stores for this year’s event. Goods perused by people at the stores but then were bought and paid for on Alibaba’s platforms, were added towards the sales total.
This also led to people to buy from brick and mortar stores, with virtual trial rooms and live fashion shows in an attempt to attract shoppers, a move that clearly worked in Alibaba’s favor! “This is a big event for China, (and) for the Chinese economy,” Joseph Tsai, Alibaba’s co founder and vice chairman, said. “On Singles’ Day, shopping is a sport, it’s entertainment.”
Alibaba is one of the World’s largest ecommerce shopping platforms and competes with Flipkart and Amazon. Alibaba provides a wide range of consumer to consumer, business to consumer and business to business sale services via online portals.
