Alibaba’s ‘Singles Day’ record breaking sales top $9 billion

According to Market Watch, China’s anti–Valentine’s Day has handily surpassed the U.S.’ s Black Friday as the world’s most lucrative online shopping day, and with the company passing $9 billion in sales in 24 hours, it has become one of the most profitable manufactured holidays in history.

Alibaba Group BABA, +0.83% the largest e-commerce company in China, surpassed $2 billion in sales volume processed through payments app Alipay within the first hour and 11 seconds of Nov. 11. As of Tuesday morning (around 11pm local time in Hangzhou China, where Alibaba is headquartered) sales had surpassed $9 billion, with some 43% generated from mobile, according to Alibaba.

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma said in an interview with CNBC that he was worried about delivering all of the packages on time. The company averages close to 17 million packages a day. Over the next three to five days, it will be responsible for more than 260 million deliveries.

Known as “Singles Day” in China, the holiday was invented by Alibaba in 2009 as a play on a two-decades-old celebration of China’s bachelors. Since then, Alibaba’s Singles Day sales have grown at a meteoric pace, skyrocketing a whopping 5,740% from 2009 to 2013.

Alibaba surpassed both its expectations and those of industry tracker IDC. Alibaba, which heavily promotes Singles Day, had expected to ring up 50 billion yuan, or a record $8.2 billion, for the day. IDC said it was “very likely” Alibaba would reach $8.65 billion, up from $5.75 billion in 2013, $3.04 billion in 2012 and $820 million in 2011. This has made Singles Day one of the most successful — and lucrative — manufactured holidays in history. To read more, click here

Source: Market Watch