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Alibaba smashes Singles Day sales records
E-commerce giant Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) has beaten its previous sales record for Singles Day – China’s biggest shopping day.
The company surpassed last year’s total of US$14.3bn with hours to spare, raking in almost US$1bn each hour in the process.
By 8pm Chinese time, over US$15bn worth of merchandise had already been sold across Alibaba’s online stores.
#Double11 https://t.co/uuuVRjsmaG pic.twitter.com/XsUD5vPUM9
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 11, 2016
To put that figure into perspective, Black Friday in the US last year ‘only’ generated sales of around US$4.5bn, while Cyber Monday posted a record total of just over US$3bn.
A whopping 85% of all the day’s purchases were made on mobile phones, Alibaba said.
Singles Day – held every year on November 11 (11/11) – was originally supposed a celebration for China’s young singletons.
But then Alibaba came in, commercialised it and turned it into one of the biggest online shopping events in the world.
The event included a flashy four-hour show in Shenzhen which featured the likes of David Beckham, Scarlett Johansson and live music from OneRepublic.
The strong sales will come as welcome news to the Chinese giant Alibaba, after analysts had aired concerns about how sustainable its growth was.
Alibaba won’t take a cut of those sales though, as it charges firms to advertise through its platform rather than claiming a chunk of those sales.
The company has also come under fire for the way it measures Singles Day, with US regulators looking into “accounting practices” this summer.
Shares were down 2% to US$92.33.
Story by ProactiveInvestors
Source: http://www.proactiveinvestors.com/companies/news/168873/alibaba-smashes-singles-day-sales-records-168873.html
