Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba recorded 540.3 billion yuan ($84.54 billion) in orders over its 11-day Singles’ Day sales event, a 14% increase over last year’s $74 billion haul.
The Singles’ Day or Double 11, originally called Bachelors’ Day, is a Chinese unofficial holiday and shopping season that celebrates people who are not in relationships. The holiday has become the largest physical retail and online shopping day in the world.
Alibaba founder Jack MaBefore the sales period began, analysts had said they expected Alibaba to report only a minor increase in GMV this year, citing slowing retail sales, supply shortages, power disruptions and COVID-19 lockdowns.
Alibaba turned China’s informal Singles’ Day into a shopping event in 2009 and built it into the world’s biggest online sales fest, dwarfing Cyber Monday in the United States.
Since then, the festival, which Alibaba last year stretched to a 11-day event with the best deals concentrated in two discount periods, Nov. 1-3 and Nov. 11, has become a closely watched gauge of consumer sentiment in the world’s second-largest economy.
Alibaba said that nearly 400 brands, including Apple Inc and L’Oreal SA, have raked in more than $15 million in sales each by mid-day on Thursday.
The shopping event comes after a year of ongoing regulatory tightening from Chinese authorities in several industries, during which Alibaba was a frequent target.
The e-commerce giant was fined a record $2.8 billion for monopolistic behaviour in April and its founder, Jack Ma, China’s highest-profile entrepreneur, has retreated from public view after criticising Chinese regulators a year ago.
MacDailyNews Take: At 11-days long, it should be called Singles’ Days. We’ll hazard a guess that Apple took in vastly more than $15 million in sales during Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales event!
