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Alibaba's super Singles Day

November 11, 2014

China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has said it's sold products worth billions of dollars in the first hours of Singles Day, the world's biggest retail event. Shoppers have been able to enjoy huge discounts.

https://p.dw.com/p/1Dl4P
Alibaba logo, a shopper passing by (dpa)
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

Alibaba announced Tuesday it sold $2 billion (1.61 billion euros) of goods in the first hour of its Singles Day shopping bonanza. It said that amount was more than one-third of the $5.6-billion full-day sales recorded on the same day last year.

The Chinese online retail giant has been pushing November 11 as Singles Day, so named for the number of ones in the date, since 2009 as it attempts to tap an expanding army of Internet shoppers in China.

Singles Day is already far bigger that major shopping festivals in the US in terms of transaction value, last year toppling the combined online sales of Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Bargains galore

Alibaba said in a statement that 45.7 percent of the transactions made during the first hour of Singles Day this year were made via mobile devices.

More than 27,000 brands and merchants are participating in the event, with consumers not only in China, but also in over 200 other nations and regions being able to join the 24-hour spending spree.

Analysts said there was certainly no obligation for merchants to take part in Singles Day, but if they did, the only discount option was 50 percent or more.

hg/sgb (AFP, Reuters)