Alibaba just earned $14.32 billion from sales in less than a day

For those of you who aren’t familiar with Single’s Day, it’s a massive shopping festival that’s the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday, and just like with Black Friday, it causes people to spend billions and billions of dollars on all the sales. According to Alibaba, which is basically the Amazon of China, it earned $14.32 billion from all the sales, with $5 billion of that being earned within the first 90 minutes. 

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s total value of goods transacted during its Singles’ Day shopping festival was 91.2 billion yuan ($14.32 billion), the Chinese e-commerce giant said in Beijing on Thursday. The numbers got a boost this year from adding the sales from various new channels, including its affiliates and investees. In all, the figure for this year’s Singles’ Day is up 60 percent from 2014. The results are preliminary and unaudited, Alibaba said. Of the total value of transactions, 68 percent was through orders from mobile devices. Six years ago, Alibaba turned Nov. 11 into China’s equivalent of United States shopping event Cyber Monday. It has now become larger than both Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined, and a closely watched barometer of the company’s performance. “Alibaba is positioned as the number one player in the Chinese e-commerce market, so it has to be seen to be maintaining, or gaining ground really,” said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based tech consultancy BDA.