The sales giant Alibaba announced on Saturday that it has reached a record breaking $25.3 billion, hours after its famous Singles’ day, which occurs on the website once a year.
Exceeding the $17.8 billion achieved by the company on last years’ Singles’ day, these figures are more than two Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays combined. Alibaba said early on Saturday that shoppers had spent about $1 billion in just two minutes. As of 12 pm in Shanghai, the final sales balance was about $25 billion, 40% more than last year’s sales.
The “Singles’ Day” has become an infamous holiday in China celebrated on the 11th of November, started by the “Ali Baba” website as a festival of discounts and deals. The tradition first started in 2009.
Alibaba has used this huge event to entice international companies to advertise their products on the website’s platforms. Indeed, 40% of the brands that participated this year came from outside China, according to Global Analysis. While this extraordinary day is aimed at consumers from within China, it is increasingly spreading in many other countries. Some companies in South East Asia, which are affiliates of Alibaba, such as Lazada, Zalora, Shopee, have launched their special offers on this year’s “Singles Day”.
Loreal, the giant cosmetic company, has created a virtual mirror in its Shanghai store, helped by Alibaba’s augmented reality technology, where shoppers can experience a virtual makeup with just a few clicks. They would simply tap on the screen and pick the makeup effects that fit them best, and check out how they would look like in a real-time simulation.
Interestingly, however, on the “Singles’ Day”, 258,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions were produced due to manufacturing, packaging and shipping processes. It would take roughly about 2.6 billion trees to absorb all this amount.
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