Singles Day: $1bn in sales in just 85 seconds

Author: Roy Soet

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has smashed records for its Singles Day, the world’s biggest 24-hour shopping event, The 2018 edition of the 11/11 Singles Day brought in a record $30.8 billion (213.5 billion yuan) and even $1bn in sales in just 85 seconds, beating Amazon’s Prime Day, as well as both US shopping holidays Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

Amazon’s Prime Day sale in July, the retailer’s biggest day of the year, is estimated to have generated around $4 billion in sales (although Amazon doesn’t report exact numbers), selling 100 million items across the 17 countries. Meanwhile the Black Friday weekend is estimated to have generated a total of $14.05 billion in online sales for 4,500 US retail websites over the course of four days, with $6.59 billion of those sales taking place as part of Cyber Monday.

The record $30.8 billion in sales marks a 27-percent increase on 2017. This does, however, mark a significant drop in overall growth, which is down compared to a rate of 39 percent year-on-year in 2017.

The hudge growth of the tech-savvy middle class in China is unstoppable and drives the success of Singles Day. Alibaba estimates that China’s middle class would almost triple by 2030, from 300 million to 850 million.