In a spending frenzy, Chinese e-shoppers obliterate America’s Cyber Monday

In Alibaba’s ‘big data’ room just before midnight, when the numbers were still zero.

Today is 11/11, China’s equivalent of America’s Cyber Monday shopfest. Even before the day is over, Chinese e-shoppers have obliterated America’s online spending frenzy, spending more than ever before. One website alone, Alibaba’s Tmall, has seen shoppers soar past last year’s Cyber Monday total at record speed. Last year, US netizens spent a total of $1.46 billion online in one day, while Tmall customers exceeded that at about 2am, after about two hours of snapping up discounts. By midday, after 12 hours of hectic buying, Tmall’s customers have spent $2.86 billion (RMB 17.5 billion) on the online marketplace. That figure counts customers using Alibaba’s own Alipay for payments – the figure will be higher once the company counts up total sales revenue. Tmall smashed its own 24-hour record today at just 9am. The site – which is the country’s biggest online marketplace for major brands and smaller retailers – is on course for as much as $5 billion in sales by the end of the day.

Not 1.3 billion people

It’s worth remembering that this 11/11 e-commerce explosion isn’t due to the cliché 1.3 billion number. China has an estimated 270 million e-shoppers this year, so all that spending is coming from those people. It’s not too much larger than America’s e-commerce user-base, which is a much higher proportion of the population than in China. Basically, China’s online shopping boom still has a few more years of explosive growth. China’s top online sales day is growing at over 100 percent, these Tmall numbers suggest. While America’s Cyber Monday looks set to grow just over 20 percent this year. (Editing by Josh Horwitz)