Singles' Day in China hit record sales again this year. (Photo : Getty Images)
The biggest online shopping festival, Singles' Day, earned $17.8 billion in revenue and broke records in sales. However, Jack Ma said that they will have more work to do.
With a 60-percent increase in sales, executives from Alibaba think that Singles' Day in China will not grow any more than that.
According to Mike Evans, the company's president, "It's highly unlikely, we'll continue to grow at 60 percent each year because the absolute numbers are becoming so large."
The massive sales declared by the company made analysts and investors skeptical. There is a $17.8 billion is gross merchandise volume (GMV), or the monetary value of Friday's transactions through Alibaba's services.
Analysts believe that the number does not reflect the amount of merchandise returned.
"The GMV results aren't as indicative of Alibaba's growth as investors may think," said Marshall Meyer, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.
Even Alibaba's founder said that the number is not indicative of Alibaba's growth,
He said, "It doesn't represent our true identity, and overemphasizing it makes people just think about e-commerce."
Recently, Alibaba has been trying to diversify by investing in other businesses like media, entertainment and cloud computing.
Duncan Clark, the founder of investment advisory firm BDA China, said, "They're on the treadmill they've created. They need to create a new paradigm and way of measuring success. You will approach a point at which Chinese consumers are sated."
Daniel Zhang, CEO of the Alibaba Group, said that e-commerce has given a new set of challenges. Alibaba's shopping holiday posed a lot of questions on developing the online marketplace.
Zhang said, "The most important opportunity on the horizon is not growing online sales in isolation but rather helping traditional retailers upgrade into a brand new retail model."
