Singles day earnings are more than Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Christmas sales combined.

If you are a shopping freak who pops out his phone every now and then just to see if any jaw dropping deal is available, you might have heard of ‘Singles day’ or Double 11 (also knows as 11.11 ) sale event recently. If not, don’t worry, we got you covered.

What’s Singles Day?

Singles Day is a Chinese Festival where Singles celebrate the beauty of being single. Alibaba has made fortune out of this in the recent years. The practice began in the 90s when Chinese university students began celebrating being single and spending on themselves in reaction to society placing so much emphasis on relationships.

Alibaba, the Ecommerce mammoth, started this event in 2009 and in the recent years, this shopping fiesta has got a great popularity. The event was launched with a promotional theme – asking people to treat themselves by buying something online for themselves.

The Game Plan

Alibaba clocked 1.5 billion orders that very same day. To make such an E-commerce event successful, Alibaba has been preparing from June this year, coordinating with thousand of brands and inventory to make this bigger than ever. This year, Alibaba also used robots and drones to do the heavy lifting on “Singles Day” deliveries. Jack Ma, Alibaba’s charismatic founder, made surprise appearance as the “retail-tainment-in-chief” in the eight edition of Shopping spree.

Through virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology, live images of actress Fan Bingbing were transmitted to audiences creating a new level of engagement for buyers. Alibaba accounted for 40% more sales than previous year. Sales data revealed that 90% of purchases were made through phone, Alipay transacting 250,000 every second at its peak.

Stats Analysis (Singles Day revenue =$25 Billion)

• Alibaba’s revenue was more than Flipkart, PayTM valuation combined.
• 60000 international brands participated.
• 150 crore: products listed.
• 167 merchants -100 Cr revenue each.
• 48 billion:payments processed through Alipay

Double 11’s consumer spending was thrice more than Cyber Monday, Black Friday and Christmas sales combined (which are US sales events). Given the increasing popularity of the offers and exciting deals on Singles Day, Alibaba wants to project it as “11.11 Global Shopping Festival” in years to come. Even Alibaba arch rival JD.com generated $20 Billion sales.