GUANGZHOU, China — Alibaba set a new sales record for the annual Singles Day shopping event, a feat that was overshadowed by a near 10% stock plunge caused by proposed new Chinese antitrust regulation.
Singles Day is typically a 24-hour shopping event in China that sees huge discounts across millions of products on e-commerce platforms run by Alibaba, JD.com and other players. It generates more sales than Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. combined.
But this year, retailers JD.com and Alibaba have extended the shopping event. It has run from Nov. 1 and will end at midnight on Nov. 12.
Alibaba said gross merchandise value (GMV), a figure that shows the total value of orders across Alibaba’s shopping platforms, surpassed 372.3 billion yuan ($56.42 billion) as of 12:30 a.m. Beijing time on Wednesday. That is the total since the shopping event kicked off on Nov. 1. That is more than the 268.4 billion yuan of GMV Alibaba recorded last year in a 24-hour period on Singles Day.
JD.com, Alibaba’s biggest rival, said transaction volume on its platform was 200 billion yuan as of 12:09 a.m. Beijing time on Wednesday. Again, that is a total from Nov. 1.
“We are probably going to be doubling last year’s 11.11 or maybe even more than that and this really shows that consumption habits have really moved online, not just in first tier (cities) but across the entire country,” Jacob Cooke, CEO of WPIC, an e-commerce tech and marketing firm that helps foreign brands sell in China, told CNBC.
