Alibaba Sets a Record with More Than 30 Billion Dollars in Sales, within 24 Hours

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has cashed a record 213.5 billion Yuan ($30.70 billion) in its sales during the company’s 24-hour online retail shopping offer called Singles’ Day. Shoppers in China and across the world hooked up for the hot deals, which include iPhones, furniture and cosmetics, recording Alibaba with roughly $10 billion in sales in the first hour after the offer is launched.

Alibaba’s Singles’ Day, which is also called “Double 11”, is the world’s biggest online sales event, followed by the sales of US shopping holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. The Chinese online sales event is for novelty student holiday to celebrate being single. But the sale event has grown into a month-long online shopping festival that reaches its peaks with a 24-hour sale on November 11 every year. This year, Alibaba surpassed last year’s sales record of 168 billion Yuan in just within sixteen hours.

Despite the record haul, the annual sales growth rate fell from 39 percent to 27 percent, at the low end, as analyst estimates and the smallest rate in the event’s 10-year history. This comes, as the company is grappling with a slimmer sales outlook amid rising trade tensions with the US, which has affected both the business and diplomatic relationship between the two world powers.

While small appliances and cosmetics were strong during the sale, but large appliances showed a lower rate of sale. “If people aren't buying new homes, they aren't buying appliances”, Alibaba vice chairman Joe Tsai told the press.

Despite the mild growth this time, Alibaba’s executives were upbeat on Sunday. At a press conference in Shanghai, which is attended by nearly 800 journalists, Ali Baba’s Chief Executive Daniel Zhang said, “Today we reached 200 billion (Yuan). But we have to change. We have to continue to change to reach 300 billion or 500 billion”. Daniel Zhang is known for being the architect of the original Singles’ Day sales. This is regarded as the company’s last November sale with founder and chairman Jack Ma at the helm of Ali Baba, as Zhang will take over as chairman next year.

Alibaba started the sale of the year with a gala event, which also featured US singer Mariah Carey. During the online sale, the company worked with 180,000 brands across over 200 countries and in the first few hours the company had sent over a billion packages to their respective destinations. The company sold nearly $1 billion within the first one minute and twenty-five seconds.