Singles' Day sales boom breaks records

Jack Ma Yun, Chairman of Alibaba Group, speaks in front of a big screen showing that the total GMV(Gross Merchandise Value) on Alibaba's shopping sites Taobao and Tmall exceeded 53.8 billion yuan($8.8 billion) at 10:45 p.m. 

during the November 11 Singles' Day shopping spree at the headquartersof Alibaba in Hangzhou city, east China's Zhejiang province, Nov 11, 2014. [Photo/IC]

HANGZHOU -- The online buying fiesta on this year's Nov. 11, also China's Singles' Day,smashed records thanks to the world's biggest online retail sales day.

Online sales on Alibaba's Tmall.com, Taobao.com and its overseas outlets, such asAliExpress, topped 57.1 billion yuan ($9.34 billion) as of 11:30 pm Tuesday, beating Tmalland Taobao's combined 2013 Singles' Day sales of 36.2 billion yuan, according to thecompany.

This year is the first time Alibaba has chosen to launch its Singles' Day campaign on both itsdomestic and overseas platforms.

Customers from 217 countries and regions outside the Chinese mainland have joined theshopping spree, with Hong Kong, the United States and Russia claiming the three top-buyerareas.

Starting as in-joke and an excuse the unattached to celebrate -- or poke fun at -- their statusin the 1990s, Singles' Day has evolved into an online shopping spree for all in recent years,as e-commerce operators stepped in to tap into the buying potential of bachelors anddiscount-savvy netizens.

Many Chinese consumers stayed up until the early hours of Tuesday to compete with millionsof others for the bargain goods. Alibaba said the late-night shopping craze drove sales to hitthe 10 billion yuan benchmark in 38 minutes. Last year, it took 6 hours to reach that amountand 13 hours in 2012.

Alibaba said nearly half of purchases had been completed on mobile devices, evidencing therising popularity of online shopping on cellphones.

Boosted by optimism on Singles' Day, Alibaba's shares rose by 4 percent to close at 119.15dollars on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. The Hangzhou-headquarteredcompany debuted its shares in New York in September with a stunning initial public offering of$25 billion.

Alibaba operates China's largest consumer-to-consumer (C2C) and business-to-consumer(B2C) marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, which sold 3.62 billion yuan's worth of goods onSingles' Day last year, more than 2.5 times of that of Cyber Monday, the Monday followingThanksgiving, which is promoted as an online shopping day in the United States.

Amazon on Tuesday also initiated a new service in China to allow customers to buy productsshipped from overseas, while the Beijing-based website 360buy offered discounts via itswebsite, mobile app and its account on popular messaging service WeChat.

The Singles' Day shopping spree is a reflection of the rapid expansion of China's e-commercesector in recent years.

According to Internet industry research agency iResearch, China's online shopping markethad a sales volume of 691.41 billion yuan in the third quarter, up by 49.8 percent from thesame period last year.

iResearch also noted that e-commerce companies are expanding their business from first-and second-tier cities to third- and fourth-tier cities and even rural areas. At the same time,they are extending their business abroad.

Jack Ma, the founder and board chairman of Alibaba, said that he hoped Alibaba wouldparticipate in China's future urbanization and better bolster domestic demand.

"I thought about the hardworking of Chinese women on the Singles' Day, and I hope to helpthem buy more quality products on the international market," Ma said.