Alibaba breaks record sale on China’s Singles Day

 

Alibaba, China’s E-commerce giant has broken its own world record for sales on China’s Singles Day, a huge viral phenomenon, the World’s biggest online shopping event. They surpassed the previous record amount of £ 6.1bn $9.3bn in just over half the time.

Singles Day, also known as Double Eleven since it is held on  four single 1s bear sticks day, 11 November  every year by Chinese retailers.  This highly commercialised event started as grassroots student movement at Nanjing University in the early nineties, as “Anti-Valentine’s day.”

Every Singles Day Alibaba offers huge discounts aimed at those who are single. Alibaba said more than £0. 66bn, $1bn was spent within eight minutes of midnight, by customers looking for bargains. Within the first hour it mad £2.6bn $3.9bn in sales almost double the amount spent in the same period last year.

On the other hand, Cyber Monday sales in the US hit £0.89m $1.35bn according to Comscore.