I blogged recently that IBM’s Digital Analytics Benchmark was forecasting another record holiday shopping season, with online sales projected to increase 15 percent over the five-day holiday period between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday.
We’ll see how the forecast holds up.
But in the meantime, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba just broke its own record, this for its own unique annual holiday, “Single’s Day.”
According to a report from Reuters, Alibaba reported more than $9 billion in sales earlier today. Yes, that’s $9 billion, with a “B,” in U.S. dollars (or 57.1 billion Chinese yuan).
How’d you like even a small piece of that big action???
Singles Day in China is a day just for that, people who are single. It’s a celebration where young singles have parties, do Karaoke, and other festive and fun-filled endeavors to make new friends. Think of it as China’s version of Valentine’s Day.
And it has now become the largest online shopping day in the world.
Last year’s festival Single’s Day brought in 35 billion yuan, so you can do the math on that year-over-year increase.
So how the increase?
The numbers this year were boosted by a “pre-sales initiative” under which merchants advertised prices as early as Oct. 15, taking deposits for the items but only processing full payments and shipping the goods on Singles’ Day itself.
Reuters goes on to point that when this celebration began in 2009, there were only 27 merchants. This year, there were shoppers from more than 200 countries.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday, good luck with all that.
The post Alibaba Blows Through Single’s Day E-Commerce Record appeared first on Turbo Todd.
