WORLD
Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales top $38 billion
Baku, November 12, AZERTAC
After 24 hours of frenzied buying and selling, and weeks of aggressive advertising and promotions before it, the Alibaba Group said today its sales hit another record high on Singles’ Day, the biggest shopping day on the planet, according to TechCrunch.
The Chinese e-commerce giant said its platforms sold goods worth 268 billion yuan, or $38.4 billion today, easily exceeding last year’s record $30.7 billion haul. Electronic gadgets and fashion items were among the most sold goods in the 11th edition of the Singles’ Day annual event, company executives said in an interview.
More than half a billion people from a number of countries participate in the event, which is China’s equivalent to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Except… Singles’ Day is much larger. The five-day Black Friday clocked less than $25 billion in sales last year. Cyber Monday clocked less than $8 billion. Alibaba Group said earlier today that it had netted its first $1 billion in sales in just 68 seconds and first $10 billion in half an hour.