China's Alibaba records 'singles day' sales of $8bn in 10 hours

Shoppers spent nearly $8bn in the first 10 hours of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba’s “singles day” event on Wednesday, the company said, reinforcing its status as the world’s biggest online retail promotion.

Total gross merchandise volume, a measure of sales, reached 50bn yuan ($7.86bn) at 9.52am, it said on its website, after the promotion began at midnight.

Alibaba’s chief executive officer, Daniel Zhang, said: “The whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption this November 11.”

In comparison, desktop sales for the five days from Thanksgiving through to Cyber Monday in the US stood at $6.56bn in 2014, according to Internet analytics firm comScore.

“Singles day” is not a traditional Chinese festival, but Alibaba has been pushing the 11 November date – named after the digits it contains – since 2009 as it looks to tap an expanding market in internet shopping in China, which has the world’s biggest online population of 668 million people.

At first it was marketed as an “anti-Valentine’s Day” in China, featuring hefty discounts to lure the country’s singletons and price-sensitive buyers.

The event has received vocal support from the government at a time when China’s economic expansion is slowing and Beijing is trying to transform the growth model into a more sustainable one driven by consumption.

The office of the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, phoned Alibaba’s chairman, Jack Ma, hours before the promotion was kicked off, “congratulating and encouraging the creation and achievement of the 11.11 event”, said a posting on the social media account of Tmall, the group’s business-to-consumer arm.

Sales reached $9.3bn for the day in 2014 – the first time the event was expanded globally – up 60% year-on-year, the company’s figures showed.

Headquartered in the eastern city of Hangzhou, Alibaba does not sell products directly but acts as an electronic middleman, operating China’s most popular consumer-to-consumer platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90% of the market.