China gripped by Singles' Day shopping frenzy

China is gripped by "Singles’ Day" online shopping frenzy, with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba fetching about USD 22.63 billion in the first nine hours of the world's biggest 24-hour shopping event. "Singles' Day" – also known as “Double 11” – is a Chinese 24-hour online shopping bonanza held on November 11 every year. It was first launched in 2009 as an anti-Valentine’s Day and a celebration of a single life.

The Singles' Day sales collections hit 10 billion yuan (about USD 1.44 billion) at just one minute and 36 seconds after midnight on Monday, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. According to Alibaba, more than 22,000 overseas brands from 200 countries and regions have participated in this year's shopping spree in China.

In the first nine hours, the sales hit USD 22.63 billion which is two-thirds of last year's final sales tally of USD 30.8 billion, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post owned by Alibaba reported. The shopping extravaganza will draw to a close at midnight.

Other brands and e-commerce retailers like JD.com, Mogujie, and VipShop too reported heavy sales. November 11 has become a default date for the people in China to snap up things and binge on entertainment shows.

Alibaba uses the event to test the limits of its cloud computing, delivery, payment capabilities as well as try out new business endeavors that are uprooting traditional retailers. This is Alibaba’s first Singles’ Day extravaganza after its founder Jack Ma quit from the helm of China’s e-commerce giant.

He stepped down as the company’s executive chairman on his 55th birthday in September last year. He named the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Daniel Zhang as his successor while he would continue to be the company’s Director. Single’s Day is largely attributed to being Zhang’s initiative.

Singles’ Day shopping festival is the world’s largest of its kind. Last year it surpassed online sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday's combined sales. The festival will be closely watched this year as a barometer for consumer sentiment amid a US-China trade war and slowdown in the Chinese economy.

While the company’s e-commerce marketplaces Tmall and Taobao are traditionally the mainstays of the annual shopping extravaganza, this year’s festival will also include business-to-business e-commerce platforms like AliExpress as well as Lazada, Alibaba’s Southeast Asian e-commerce subsidiary, as the company taps international consumers, the Post report said. Opening sales were brisk, hitting USD 10 billion in just under 30 minutes, half the time from the previous year, it said.

Each year, Alibaba holds a massive concert the day before Singles’ Day. This year’s concert in Shanghai featured Taylor Swift.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)