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Singles Day: World's Biggest Retail Event(Sky News (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) China's Singles Day shopping bonanza has gone global for the first time, extending its position as the world's biggest retail event. Singles Day - dubbed an 'anti-Valentine's Day - takes its title from the date 11 November because of the high number of ones in 11/11. Alibaba said $2bn (£1.2bn) of goods were sold in the first hour of trading in China on Tuesday. The e-commerce firm, which completed a $25bn flotation in New York two months ago, said that amount was more than a third of the total sales recorded on the same day last year. Singles Day surpassed major shopping festivals in the US in terms of transaction value last year, toppling the combined online sales of $3.7bn recorded on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to an estimate by Internet analytics firm comScore. It has been expanded globally this year to include overseas merchants and customers. Alibaba said that within the first hour and 12 seconds of Singles Day trade, more than 12.23 billion yuan ($2bn) of deals were settled on both domestic and international retail marketplaces. It added that 46% of the transactions were made via mobile devices. Alibaba operates China's most popular online shopping platform, Taobao, which is estimated to hold more than 90% of the online market for consumer-to-consumer transactions. The company does not sell products directly but acts as an electronic middleman. It also owns other marketplaces, including business-to-consumer platform Tmall. More than 27,000 brands and merchants are participating in this year's Singles Day, while consumers in more than 220 countries and regions will be able to join the 24-hour spending spree, the Alibaba statement said. China's state postal service expects to ship some 500 million packages. But some Internet users have accused merchants of trying to fool consumers ahead of the sale day. One wrote on China's Twitter-like blogging service Weibo."I don't know why people are so excited about the 'Double 11' (November 11). "It's meaningless as they all hike prices before offering a discount." (c) Sky News 2014 |