Alibaba breaks last year’s Singles’ Day record with $38b in sales

Chinese consumers collectively spent 268.4 billion yuan (US$38.4 billion) for Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, setting a new record for the 24-hour shopping extravaganza.

The final tally for this year’s Singles’ Day was up nearly 26% compared to last year’s figure of 213.5 billion yuan (US$30.5 billion), as consumption during the festival remained robust despite a protracted US-China trade war – now in its 17th month – and a slowdown in the Chinese economy.

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Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival, which falls on November 11 every year, is the world’s largest of its kind, where shoppers scoop up everything from consumer electronics to luxury items and even cars.

“Singles’ Day is becoming more recognized worldwide […] but since it is still very much a domestic holiday and event, it is a true test of Chinese consumer power,” said Benson Ng, Greater China digital advisory leader at EY.

While Alibaba’s ecommerce marketplaces, Tmall and Taobao, are traditionally the mainstays of the annual shopping spectacle, this year’s festival includes business-to-business ecommerce platforms like AliExpress as well as Lazada (Alibaba’s Southeast Asian ecommerce subsidiary) as the company taps international consumers.

Alibaba Group Holding is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.

Hong Kong, the US, Taiwan, Australia, and Japan were the top five overseas buyers 12 hours in.

“The digital consumption among Chinese consumers is still very high,” said Ng, adding that the demand for imported goods in the country is still strong despite the US-China trade war.

“The origin of the [imported] goods sold in China come from Japan and the US, and this is very good news.”

Opening sales were brisk, hitting US$10 billion in just under 30 minutes, half the time from the previous year.

Gross merchandise value (GMV) for the Double 11 Global Shopping Festival is the total value of orders settled through Alipay on Alibaba’s consumer-facing core commerce platforms, as well as Lazada and AliExpress, within a 24-hour period on November 11. It is reported on a real-time basis and includes shipping charges paid, according to Alibaba.

Apart from Alibaba, rival sites such as JD.com and Pinduoduo have also launched their own Singles’ Day campaigns to entice buyers to spend on their platforms. JD.com reported that its sales, which started on November 1, had reached 165.8 billion yuan (US$23.7 billion) by 9 am on November 11.

Singles’ Day got its name from its date. Written numerically as 11/11, the date looks like “bare branches,” a Chinese expression for the single and unattached. As a kind of antidote to the societal pressures of being in a relationship, many of China’s singles began splurging on themselves on Singles’ Day, which became seen as a type of anti-Valentine’s Day.