Alibaba continued its record-breaking run this year at its Singles’ Day shopping festival, the world’s largest shopping event. It raises the possibility that it will surpass last year’s trading volume
The November 11 festival, which began at 0:00 a.m. on Wednesday, saw Alibaba sale record exceed 10 billion yuan in just one minute and 36 seconds. Pushing past last year’s record of 2 minutes and 5 seconds by 29 seconds.
The 50 billion yuan mark was also achieved in 12 minutes and 49 seconds, breaking last year’s record of 26 minutes and three seconds. While the 100 billion yuan broke in 1 hour, 3 minutes and 59 seconds, more than 40 minutes earlier than last year.
As of 8 a.m., trading stood at 150.3 billion yuan, exceeding the 120.7 billion yuan mark for all of 2016. Adding to expectations that this year’s trading volume will exceed last year’s 213.5 billion yuan.
The Chinese e-commerce recorded $23 billion in the first 9 hours. It is nearly two third of Amazon’s online store sale last quarter.
Why the Singles’ Day sale is important for Alibaba
At Alibaba’s November 11 shopping festival this year, 200,000 brands are selling more than 1 million new products. Alibaba estimated a total of 500 million customers will go shopping using its platform by midnight, 100 million more than last year.
The “Double Eleven’ shopping festival, which began in 2009 was originally the Singles’ Day. Which Alibaba group holding transformed into a shopping festival day. Trading volume, which stood at 50 million yuan in the first year, surged to 213.5 billion yuan (400 times) last year, becoming a global shopping festival.
China is on the verge of a rapid economic slowdown amid the aftermath of the two-year-long trade war. So the world is paying attention to how much it will surpass last year’s trading volume at this year’s event.
However, Alibaba’s two-day trading volume is also growing in overall size, but the pace of growth is noticeably slowing.
Last year, Alibaba’s Nov. 11 trading volume rose 26.9 percent from the previous year. But it slowed by more than 10 percentage points from the previous year’s 39.3 percent gain.
The Chinese e-commerce industry giant is going forward with its Hong Kong IPO. Previously, the company has had to delay the IPO plan for several reasons.
