Yesterday was Single’s Day, a Chinese holiday that is meant to celebrate being single but as become the largest offline and online shopping festival. Alibaba, China’s biggest e-commerce store set a world record yesterday with sales of over $25 billion.

Alibaba is said to have processed 256,000 transactions per second via its mobile payment app, Alipay to arrive at ¥163.8 billion (~$25.3 billion) mainly via its stores Taobao and Tmall.

The new record is a 39% increase over last year’s ¥120.7 billion (~$17.9 billion). It has also raised Alibaba’s quarterly revenue by 61%.

Alibaba’s Single’s Day sale dwarfs the US’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping sales by a large margin. In 2016, retailers recorded $3 billion on Black Friday and $3.45 billion on Cyber Monday compared to Alibaba’s $17.8 billion on Single’s Day. Both figures were actually record sales for the shopping events.

It is important to explain how Alibaba makes its money from the sales. For sellers on Tmall, there is a commission and store fee that they are charged, while Taobao brings in money by providing stores with boosted ads.

Alongside the sales figure, Alibaba also released some interesting stats:

• it recorded a total of 812 million orders
• over 140,000 brands, of which 60,000 are international listed on Tmall.
• 167 sellers recorded over ¥100 million each in sales
• 17 sellers recorded over ¥500 million each in sales
• while six merchants crossed ¥ 1 billion (~$150.9 million)

READ MORE: JD.com Launches Luxury E-Commerce Platform Toplife To Rival Alibaba’s Luxury Pavilion

Alibaba’s rivals, JD.com on the other hand started its Singles Day promo from the first day of the month until 12th and recorded ¥127.1 billion (~$19.14 billion). While it comes in second place, it still shows Alibaba’s superiority as it recorded its own sales figure in 24 hours compared to JD.com.

(Source)

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