HANGZHOU, China — Consumers spent more than $2 billion on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s shopping platforms within the first hour of Singles’ Day, a holiday falling annually on Nov. 11 and, representing the opposite of Valentine’s Day, is meant to be a day to celebrate singlehood.
In China, Singles’ Day has become on online shopping bonanza, with e-tailing sales over the past couple of years trumping sales of both America’s Black Friday and CyberMonday combined. Retailers offer deep discounts for the holiday, selling everything from wallets and shirts to televisions and mobile phones for a fraction of their original sticker price.
Nearly a hundred domestic and international reporters gathered at Alibaba’s offices in Hangzhou, a city near Shanghai where the company is headquartered, to witness initial sales from the holiday. Real-time figures were updated on a giant screen in an auditorium on one of Alibaba’s campuses here as well as which brands had the highest sales. International brands that ranked among the top included Nike, Adidas AG and the Gap.
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This year, Alibaba is attempting to make Singles’ Day a worldwide phenomenon, opening up its online payment solutions to consumers in over 200 countries and goods available for sale on Tmall Global, an extension of Tmall.com, Alibaba’s business-to-consumer platform, that allows overseas brands with no China business licenses to market and sell products on the mainland. Orders can be fulfilled and shipped from outside of China and orders settled in the preferred currency of the retailer. Single’s Day sales figures from other countries were not immediately available.
Alibaba is offering free international shipping on selected items for shoppers in Brazil, Spain and Russia.
On Nov. 11, 2013, Chinese consumers spent $5.7 billion on Taobao.com, Alibaba’s consumer-to-consumer e-commerce site, and Tmall.com, the business-to-consumer site. Within the first 18 minutes of this year’s 24-hour-long Single’s Day shopping binge, shoppers more than $1 billion, Alibaba said. The e-tailing giant, which had a record breaking IPO in New York earlier this year, measures sales figures based on gross merchandise value, or GMV, a metric of the amount of business transacted on its shopping platforms.