Chinese company Alibaba, owner of web shops like AliExpress, reported an income of $25.4 billion during the massive Singles’ Day sale. The biggest shopping day in Mainland China proved to be incredibly lucrative for the company, as the online sales were up by 39 percent, breaking the previous record of 120.7 billion Yuan (approx. $18 billion) and exceeding the combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. Not only that, but Alibaba set the world record for the number of online transactions during this sale with nearly 1.5 billion transactions made in just one day. It also helped that the sale was heavily promoted for the past couple of weeks, so even the international customers were prepared for the shopping frenzy.
Originally a celebration among the young Chinese people that wanted to express their pride in being single, November 11th eventually became the largest shopping day in China, with retail and online stores competing with massive discounts and deals available during the event. This year, Alibaba was prepared to smash the last year’s records and has created quite a celebration in Shanghai, with an opening ceremony hosted by actress Nicole Kidman and singer Pharell Williams and, of course, a large video wall that tracked the revenue in real time. The $10 billion mark was reached in just an hour after the sale started, but it helped that the company allowed pre-orders at sale prices days before the event started. Joseph Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba, couldn’t hide his excitement about the Single’s Day sale, explaining how the event is a big deal for China and its economy. Mister Tsai event went further to compare Singles’ Day shopping with sport. Considering how much some of his company’s customers were spending during the sale, it might as well be considered as such.
With the closing of another annual Singles’ Day sale, China has seen a significant bump in the national budget powered by both the rising growth of disposable income among its citizens and the international sales made via online stores that offered deep discounts this Saturday. Huge competition in the Chinese market among online stores even drove some of them, like Alibaba, to start investing into retail, creating stores that combine physical browsing of the goods with online payments, the tactic that was essential for the massive growth in the revenue during this year’s sale.