Alibaba’ Singles Day surpasses last year GMV, hits $19 Bn in sales within 15 hours

Global e-commerce behemoth Alibaba has registered the sale of about of $19.2 billion on Singles Day (also known as 11.11 Global Shopping Festival) within 15 hours. Singles Day is a celebration of China's lonely hearts, has become the globe’s biggest online shopping event, with takings beat those of its US equivalents, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, collectively.

The ninth edition of the much-anticipated 24-hour annual shopping spree nearly recorded 325,000 orders every second by Alibaba Cloud (the cloud computing arm of Alibaba) within the first hour of the shopping extravaganza, the company said.

“As of 3 p.m., total GMV has exceeded RMB127.4 billion (around USD19.2 billion) – and still going. Of that total, mobile GMV comprised 91%,” mentioned Alibaba’s news hub Alizila.

More than 60 leading global brands such as Apple, Nike, Samsung, Zara, Gap among others sold over $15 million worth goods each within the first hour of the fest. The festival provides offers from over 140,000 brands and 15 million product listings this year.

Kicked-off in 2009, the festival grossed about $18 billion during the 24-hour period in 2016. The Jack Ma-led company surpassed last year’s record-breaking GMV within 13 hours of sale.

For this year’s festival, Alibaba has brought together the online and offline shopping experiences. The company has converted about 100,000 retail stores to smart stores, which will allow consumers to receive customised shopping experience with the use of facial recognition, cloud shelf and location-based store and discount recommendations.

Alibaba’s logistics partner Cainiao is expected to employ over three million logistics personnel to deliver over one billion packages brought during the shopping fest.