- Alibaba has shattered a record on Singles Day this year with over $30 billion in sales, of which $1 billion was in the first 68 seconds.
Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba has set a sales record for Singles Day today. Singles Day is the largest 24-hour shopping event in the world. Across Alibaba’s shopping platforms, the company surpassed last year’s 213.5 billion yuan ($30.5 billion) record in gross merchandise value (GMV). Alibaba passed this record on Monday afternoon local time and it kept rising throughout the day, according to CNBC.
This is the 11th edition of the annual Singles Day event. And it is also called the Double 11 shopping festival since it takes place on November 11. The shopping event takes place during a 24-hour period, which starts at midnight in Singapore and Hong Kong. Alibaba drastically reduces its prices on its websites like Alibaba.com and Tmall.
The Alibaba Singles Day sales last year surpassed spending by consumers during every single U.S. shopping holiday like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
In order to increase sales, Alibaba also expanded the number of discounted items for this year’s event and it also live-streamed content on its platform to sell goods. For example, Alibaba hit $1 billion spent in the first 68 seconds and $10 billion within the first half hour as musician Taylor Swift kicked off the event with a concert in Shanghai. And Kim Kardashian also did a live-stream announcing a fragrance brand called KKW — which can be purchased through Tmall. Within an hour and a half, Alibaba surpassed the total Singles Day sales it saw in 2016 total.
Alibaba’s rivals like JD.com and Pinduoduo also offer discounts on its products. JD.com started offering Double 11 discounts beforehand.
The top-selling products include the Apple iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max along with the 5G version of the Huawei Mate 30 Pro.
