Alibaba’s consumer shopping sites sold more than $14.3 billion of products on its biggest shopping day of the year, called Singles Day, marking around a 57 percent increase over last year’s total.
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With 9 billion in product sales transacted via its online marketplace, the company said it has seen a record number of annual active buyers with 367 million global users, and 307 million monthly mobile active users, up 18 million from March this year. Suning’s in-store sales will count toward Alibaba’s total gross merchandise volume, as long as they go through final processing online, an Alibaba spokesman said.
Huge demand from China caused a shortage of premium organic baby milk formula in Australia. A few refer to the event as the Singles Day Sale because it falls on Singles Day, a day for Chinese young single people to celebrate their independence by treating themselves to a special purchase. It is very relevant to assume that majority would have waited for Singles Day to spend heavily.
Singles Day is also known as Bachelors Day because of the gender imbalance caused by China’s one-child policy and traditional preferences to have sons.
Alibaba clocked $2 billion within 17 minutes compared to last year’s $1 billion worth of sales.
Alibaba’s numbers this year will get a boost from sales by affiliates including brick-and-mortar retailer Suning Commerce Group Co 002024.SZ , in which it bought a 20 percent stake in August. Moreover, the e-commerce titan estimated that around 400,000 merchants and 30000 brands from more than 25 countries will be selling goods on its online platform. “The whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption this November 11”, said Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive officer.
“This year the sales may come close to $AU18 billion”, said Cao Lei, head of the China e-Business Research Centre in the city of Hangzhou.
The e-commerce company revealed that a year ago, they took in more than 278 million orders within 24 hours after the Singles Day started.
Singles Day is celebrated in China every year on 11 November.
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The latest industrial output statistics from China overnight show manufacturing output rose by just 5.6% year on year to the end of October – that’s lower than the 5.8% expected and further evidence that the world’s second largest economy is slowing.
