Alibaba's sales surpassed the $2 billion mark in just the first hour of Singles Day, which is the largest annual shopping day in China.
The online shopping festival, which is held every 11th of November, started as a celebration for the single people in the country. However, it has now been transformed into a multi-billion dollar online shopping frenzy that the Chinese participate in, whether single or not.
For Singles Day in 2013, online sales in the country amounted to a total of $8 billion. From figures reported by the Boston Consulting Group, this amount is over double compared to the combined sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, which comes in at just $3 billion.
The first hour Singles Day for 2014 indicates that there will be record-breaking sales for the online shopping festival.
Singles Day started as somewhat of an opposite for Valentine's Day. Whereas Valentine's Day on Feb. 14 celebrates couples that are romantically linked, Singles Day celebrates single people. This is why it is held on Nov. 11, or 11/11, which represents four single individuals.
For Singles Day, exchanging gifts is a common practice, as is eating fried dough strips as snacks, which are like churros, because they resemble the number "1."
E-commerce giant Alibaba began capitalizing on the occasion back in 2009, when the company started to offer special discounts for Singles Day to be able to attract more buyers for the gifts that they will be giving to others and maybe to themselves too.
The 24-hour shopping frenzy had consumers spending a total of $9.3 billion, around 60 percent more than the $5.8 billion recorded spending last year.
Of the $8 billion in online sales for Singles Day last year, Alibaba was responsible for more than half with $5.8 billion. Alibaba was able to reach such a high sales figure due to offering deals on almost everything, including apparel, food, electronics, cosmetics, appliances, and many more. A 13-carat diamond was one of the items sold last year, taking in an amount of almost $4 million.
The difference this year is that Alibaba has forged partnerships with the sellers operating on its online commerce websites to extend the bargains beyond China, in an attempt to pull in sales from all over the world.
Alibaba's performance for Singles Day will be highly monitored, as the online shopping festival for this year will be the first one that the company will go through since its $25 billion IPO in New York.
Alibaba has been performing very well, with revenue increasing by 54 percent for the September quarter compared to the corresponding period last year.
