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Alibaba Singles’ Day 2019 event countdown gala celebration (Source: www.alibabagroup.com)
Summary
- Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales event has crossed US$ 56.3 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV).
- Singles’ Day in China is an unofficial holiday celebrated on November 11. It was started off by students in the Nanjing University in 1993.
- Alibaba said on Wednesday that as many as 342 brands crossed the 100 million-yuan mark in GMV within 35 minutes of the sales starting off on November 1.
- The company reportedly generated orders worth more than US$ 56 billion in its opening hours of sales.
Alibaba’s much-hyped Singles’ Day is here and the sales event is creating quite a buzz. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic still disrupting lives across the world, people have made the most of the discounts and offers by Alibaba to celebrate Singles’ Day on Wednesday, November 11.
The Chinese tech giant recently said that it has crossed US$ 56.3 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the light of the sales by Wednesday morning. The United States the top buying nation in the Alibaba’s Singles’ Day event, closely followed by Russia, France and Malaysia, said the company.
Canada, which celebrates its Remembrance Day in honor of its veterans on Wednesday, is the tenth country on Alibaba’s list to be making the most of the Singles’ Day sales.
What Is Alibaba’s Singles’ Day Event?
Executive chairperson Daniel Zhang’s Alibaba Group Holding kickstarted the Singles’ Day event in China back in 2009. The event slowly picked up paced and bubbled over to become an annual global trend. Some reports even claim that the Singles’ Day shopping event has grown to become more popular than those of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the US.
Originated in the Nanjing University as the Bachelors’ Day in 1993, Singles' Day is an unofficial Chinese holiday celebrated mostly by, as the name suggests, single people. Its date, November 11 or 11/11, is supposedly a witty play around the four ones resembling a group of four single people.
From its simple beginnings as a day for single people, November 11 became the shopping sensation that it is today when ecommerce giant Alibaba launched its Singles’ Day sales in 2009. Presently, it is one of the largest shopping events in the world.
How Much Does Alibaba Make On Singles’ Day?
Alibaba Group reportedly raked orders worth more than US$ 30 billion during Singles’ Day sales in 2018, a sales increase of 27 per cent. The company said that its GMV at the end of the event in 2019 crossed US$ 38 billion, marking about 26 per cent year-over-year increase.
It also said the number of delivery orders during the 2019 Singles’ Day event crossed 1.042 billion in under 19 hours.
The US$ 5.38-trillion market cap company started off its 24-hour shopping festival with an extravagant ceremony last year, including a live performance by singer Taylor Swift and a live-streamed promotion of more than 1,000 brands.
In 2019, Alibaba said that about 84 brands, including Apple Inc, L’Oreal, Fast Retailing Co, etc, made over 100 million yuan each in the first hour of the sales.
2020 Singles’ Day Sales
This year’s Singles’ Day event is being held at Shanghai’s Mercedes-Benz Arena, and it saw a mega virtual performance by singer Katy Perry.
Alibaba claimed on Wednesday that as many as 342 brands crossed 100 million yuan in GMV within 35 minutes of the sales starting off on November 1. Meanwhile, 13 brands surpassed the mark of 1 billion yuan. Between November 1 and 11, Alibaba said that its total GMV exceeded 372.3 billion yuan.
Big brands such as Apple Inc, L’Oreal, Adidas, Haier, Estee Lauder, etc each have surpassed the mark of 100 million yuan, it added.
The company reportedly generated orders worth more than US$ 56 billion in its opening hours of sales. Alibaba also made record by logging 583,000 orders per second.
This year’s Singles’ Day event comes closely follows Alibaba reportedly lost billions of dollars in its market value after China suspended the initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group, Alibaba’s sister company.
Alibaba’s Stock Performance (NYSE: BABA, BABA:US)
Six-month performance chart of Alibaba (Source: EODHD/Others, Thomson Reuters)
Shares of Alibaba Group Holding are up over 25 per cent this year. The scrips registered a growth of over 32 per cent in the last six months and about seven per cent in the last three months.
Since dropping in value amid the March market collapse, the stocks climbed over 29 per cent in the following eight months.
However, stocks of Alibaba Group plunged over 12 per cent in November around the news of Ant Group’s much-awaited IPO being suspended in China.
Alibaba stocks nosedived by over 8 per cent in the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by Wednesday afternoon. However, in NYSE, the stocks were trading flat at US$ 264.275 at 9:53 am ET.
With federal holidays of Veterans Day in the US and Remembrance Day in Canada, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales are through the roof in North America. Whether this event will impact Alibaba’s stock performance, only time can tell.
