A new Singles' Day sales record for Alibaba

Chinese Alibaba has managed to beat several sales records during Singles’ Day, China’s most important sales opportunity for eCommerce. The “tradition”, which Alibaba launched in 2009, resulted in more than 16 billion euro in revenue this year.

Turnover up by a third

In total, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day revenue reached 120.7 billion yuan (16.4 billion euro), significantly better than its 2015 turnover of 91 billion yuan (12.4 billion euro). Even though the event (taking place on 11 November) was only launched on Alibaba in 2009, it has become a cultural phenomenon which also attracts a lot of foreign shoppers as well as Chinese.

In that short period of time, Singles’ Day has become the world’s most important sales day, totalling more than Black Friday and Cyber Monday put together. The Chinese economy’s growth may have slowed down, but there was no sign of that on Singles’ Day. Apple’s iPhone was the most popular item, followed by Nike and Adidas and Chinese technology brand Haier’s appliances.