Alibaba Made $38 Billion In Just 24 Hours Of Frenzied Shopping On Singles' Day

Yesterday was Singles' Day in China, one of the country's biggest shopping festivals akin to Black Friday in the US. It's a celebration of people not in relationships, and encourages self-care. And one of the biggest winners each year is e-commerce platforms.

Images courtesy: Reuters

This year, Alibaba Group put out weeks of advertising and promotions, for just 24 hours of crazed buying, and it paid off. The company says its sales hit a record high of $38.4 billion, blowing past last year's mark of $30.7 billion. Electronics and fashion items were obviously the most-traded items, company executives say.

This year was big for even Singles' Day. It was the eleventh edition of the festival, making it a double 11. As such, Alibaba even hosted celebrities like Taylor Swift and more to generate buzz.

It's the biggest shopping festival on the planet, dwarfing even Black Friday. The five-day US event clocked just $25 billion in sales last year, whereas Singles' Day demolished that milestone in 24 hours. Alibaba Group in fact said that it earned its first $1 billion in sales in just 68 seconds and the first $10 billion in half an hour.

And Alibaba has worked out a good system to cater to everyone partaking in the madness. The Alibaba website sells local goods to international customers, Tmall sells global items to Chinese people, and Taobao sells Chinese brands only going local. And that's not counting other subsidiaries like Lazada, that cater to more specific markets.

According to Alibaba, brands like Apple, L'Oreal and Dyson, received more than $14 million in pre-orders.

However, it was also a big deal for Alibaba because this is the first Singles' Day without founder Jack Ma. Having recently retired as CEO, Ma was probably watching from the background like a proud mama bird.

Sadly for the rest of us, there's no telling just how much waste the buying festival also generated in a single day. But it's probably a lot.