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China shopping festival smashes record with $25 billion haul
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, said on Saturday its Singles' Day sales extravaganza hit $25.4 billion, smashing its own record from last year and cementing it as the world's biggest shopping event. Once a celebration for China's lonely hearts, Singles' Day has become an annual 24-hour buying frenzy that exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States, and acts as a barometer for China's consumers.
As tills shut midnight on Saturday, Alibaba's live sales ticker registered 168.3 billion yuan, up 39 percent from 120.7 billion yuan last year. The dollar figure was up more steeply due to the strength of the yuan against the greenback this year.
The event began soon after a star-studded event in Shanghai late on Friday. As midnight hit, a deluge of pre-orders helped drive a billion dollars of sales on Alibaba's platforms in the first two minutes and $10 billion in just over an hour. "In terms of scale it just dwarfs any other event out there," said Ben Cavender, Shanghai-based principal at China Market Research Group.
But what is Singles' Day?
Chinese Singles' Day or Guanggun Jie (Chinese: 光棍节; pinyin: Guānggùn Jié; Wade–Giles: Kuang-kun chieh; literally: "Single Sticks' Holiday") is an entertaining festival widespread among young Mainland Chinese people, to celebrate the fact that they are proud of being single. The date, November 11th (11/11), is chosen because the number "1" resembles an individual that is alone. This festival has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world,[2] with sales in Alibaba's sites Tmall and Taobao at US$5.8 billion in 2013, US$9.3 billion in 2014, US$14.3 billion in 2015 and over US$17.8 billion in 2016.
Related: Alibaba Revenues Surge 61% On Online Shopping
(Score: 5, Funny) by RamiK on Sunday November 12 2017, @09:21PM
Alibaba has been reported to have undug Mao's tomb and rigged his remains to an electric generator. Bids for the 永興发电电动发电机 Mark 1 will begin at 150 million dollars. All verified bidders will be given 5000 AliExpress points with each bid. At least 50% of the revenues will be invested back into the project to afford the deployment of the seismographs array surrounding the Party's catacombs to further the development of new, improved generators. Free Aliexpress coupons up, and including, to the value of 500$ will be given to all party members' relatives in recognition of their contribution to the betterment of a better, smarter China.
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