The Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba says all kinds of records were broken on this year’s Singles Day. The shopping holiday is held in China on November 11 every year and ostensibly celebrates people’s pride in being single, but in the last few years has just become an excuse for holding the biggest online sales day of the year.
It has officially begun! Happy 11.11 from Hangzhou! pic.twitter.com/iKfdMuTgSG
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 10, 2019
Singles Day 2019 got off to a roaring start with Alibaba saying that online sales topped $12 billion in just the first hour after midnight (which is when Singles Day sales begin).
One hour after midnight on 11.11, total GMV is US$12.01 billion #Double11 pic.twitter.com/SK4oqF4e2r
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 10, 2019
By 6:30 in the morning—just six and a half hours of sales—that number grew to $20 billion.
Another significant #Double11 milestone was reached at about 6:30 this morning, when GMV exceeded US$20 billion. pic.twitter.com/uCNRXAFP14
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 11, 2019
And just 16 and a half hours into the Singles Day 2019 sales, Alibaba brought in $31 billion in sales, exceeding the record for 2018. To put that in perspective, in 2018 Black Friday sales in the U.S. only totaled $6.2 billion and Cyber Monday 2018 sales totaled another $7.9 billion, according to SalesCycle.
Total GMV for the 2019 #Double11 Global Shopping Festival has exceeded RMB213.5 billion, surpassing the total GMV of 2018 11.11. pic.twitter.com/EbdQADBe8x
— Alibaba Group (@AlibabaGroup) November 11, 2019
Shortly after that time the company also announced that the number of orders surpassed 1 billion. That’s nearly seven hours faster than orders reached that milestone last year.
https://twitter.com/AlibabaGroup/status/1193835013558566912
And as CNN reports, Singles Day pre-order sales also got off to a roaring start for some companies. Estée Lauder brought in $143 million in sales of its products and consumers in China bought $14 million worth of iPhone 11s.
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