Alibaba celebrates record-smashing sales on 2019 Singles Day.

Monday 11/11 Plays Out Like a Dream for Online Chinese Retailers

On 11/11/19, while Americans were busy holding memorials and parades for military veterans, China celebrated Singles Day, an online shopping “holiday” that brought in record-breaking sales for Chinese internet retailer Alibaba. Consumers spent $38 billion over a 24 hour period.

Michael Grothaus covered the big day for fastcompany.com and shared some of the figures from Alibaba. He reports that Singles Day 2019 got off to a roaring start with Alibaba reporting that online sales topped $12 billion in just the first hour after midnight (which is when Singles Day sales begin).

Just 16 and a half hours into the Singles Day 2019 sales, Alibaba brought in $31 billion in sales, exceeding the record for 2018. To put that in perspective, in 2018 Black Friday sales in the U.S. only totaled $6.2 billion and Cyber Monday 2018 sales totaled another $7.9 billion, according to SalesCycle.

Alibaba’s first hour Tweet.

Worldwide, companies were raking in their share of  the Singles Day Boom as well. As CNN reports, Singles Day pre-order sales also got off to a roaring start for some companies. Estée Lauder brought in $143 million in sales of its products and consumers in China bought $14 million worth of iPhone 11s.

The Chinese e-commerce giant said its platforms sold goods worth 268 billion yuan, or $38.4 billion today, easily exceeding last year’s record $30.7 billion haul according to techcrunch.com.

read more at techcrunch.com