China’s Alibaba website gears up for Singles' Day
Baku, November 11, AZERTAC It's that time of year again: When Chinese netizens celebrate not having anyone special in their lives by buying billions of dollars worth of products online.
Singles' Day—so named because the date Nov. 11 has four singles (11/11)—was started as an in-joke between university students, but has morphed into China's equivalent of Cyber Monday. Spurred by Alibaba and its network of online retailers, the day has grown from $7 million in sales in 2009 to over $5.7 billion last year for Jack Ma's company.
And as the holiday moves away from its bachelor roots to become a more inclusive affair, analysts expect more record sales figures.
In fact, Alibaba recorded its first $1 billion in sales this Singles' Day in only 17 minutes—it took about an hour last year. After about the same amount of time this year, Alibaba touched $2 billion in gross merchandise volume.
This year, Alibaba's sales are expected to be about 50 billion yuan ($8.17 billion), a 40 percent increase from last year, according to Ben Cavender, principal at China Market Research Group.
Vanessa Zeng, a Beijing-based Forrester senior analyst for China's e-commerce sector, estimated that sales could even reach 60 billion yuan ($9.8 billion) with the continued growth of mobile shopping in China. Alibaba said it saw $32 billion in sales on mobile in September alone.
But the day is about much more than just posting big sales numbers, analysts said.
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