Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma and partners kick off this year's Singles' Day, which reached a record-breaking sale of $14 billion. (Photo : www.footwearnews.com)
China's e-commerce giant Alibaba has reached record-breaking sales of more than 90 billion yuan ($14 billion) on the recently concluded Singles' Day on Wednesday, Nov.11, the crienglish.cn reported.
According to the report, the number is a 60-percent increase from last year as the company's payment service Alipay reportedly processed 117 million transactions during the first hour on Wednesday.
Alibaba CEO Jack Ma had earlier expressed desire to expand China's online shopping fever to the rest of the world.
"11/11, this day starts from China and will go global. And I think in the next five years, we may be in Tokyo, we may be in Paris and maybe we are in New York. We hope 11/11 is a great day for every consumer, every small business for every business who are on the Internet age," Ma said.
According to Alibaba stats, this year's orders were placed from 232 countries and regions across the world.
The report said that JD.com, the company's chief rival, had 20 million online orders by 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday.
Early figures showed that around 70 percent of the sales were made via mobile platforms. Food items increased in popularity during the sale, while televisions were a favorite among rural buyers.
Nov. 11, known as the Singles' Day in China in the '90s, was created by young singles as an excuse to buy themselves presents. In 2009, Alibaba launched its first Double 11 online sales and since then the day has been marked as the biggest online shopping spree of the year in China.
Comparatively, Americans spent just $1.5 billion online on last year's Black Friday, the Friday before Thanksgiving, one of the biggest sales days of the year in the U.S.
