In One Hour, Alibaba’s Singles Day Sales Hit $10 Billion
The event’s date, written numerically as 11/11, was associated with unattached singles, known as “bare sticks.”
This year’s shopping festival entered new territory, blazing past $1 billion within two minutes of the holiday, starting at midnight on Saturday.
In July, Prime Day generated an estimated $1 billion in revenue during its 30-hour sale window, resulting in what Amazon called
its “biggest day ever.” A little more than an hour into this year’s Singles Day, sales had already exceeded $10 billion.
Singles Day — the frenzied annual celebration of consumption and commerce
that is China’s much larger version of Black Friday — began as a protest of sorts against Valentine’s Day, propelled by college students in the 1990s.
Singles Day is now inextricably linked with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce leviathan
that in recent years has turned the holiday into an online — and occasionally brick-and-mortar — mercantile extravaganza.
The company promised delivery within an hour for certain products and, in advance of the shopping festival, converted nearly 100,000
stores across China into “smart stores” capable of processing payment using facial recognition and other advanced technologies.
One offer, from the Chongqing-based online alcohol brand Jiang Xiao Bai, allowed 33 fast-moving customers to
make a single payment of 11,111 yuan, or $1,673, for a lifetime supply of a grain liquor known as baijiu.
