This year sales have already hit the $9 billion dollar mark in sales from Alibaba, which puts it’s growth from 2013 at over $3 billion. Singles Day has now become the most profitable shopping holiday of the year. Over 43% of the sales came from mobile purchases.
In 2009, Alibaba founder Jack Ma chose Nov. 11 for the big day – 11-11 to celebrate being single. Kind of the opposite of Valentine’s day. Last year, Singles Day sales racked up $5.7 billion in sales on Alibaba’s shopping platforms, counted in U.S. dollars. Pre-orders for this big shopping day have been placed since mid-October. Even though only 25% of Chinese citizens shop online, this event could become bigger in the coming years. It is predicted that within 5 years, this will become a global holiday.
The number of sellers has jumped from about 10,000 last year to more than 27,000 this year. Two merchants that are new on the Tmall website (owned by Alibaba) are Costco and Telsa Motors.
So what does Jack Ma, owner of Alibaba worry about these days? Besides being the richest man in China, he worries that all the packages ordered on Singles Day – a staggering 260 million plus – will be delivered on time.
The introduction of Alibaba to the American stock market opened the door to the mega company’s cooperative agreements with other nations such as France, Italy, Germany and others. Providing a platform to market products made all over the world has changed the retail landscape forever. With the largest global IPO in history, this company has topped analysts expectations and is currently our favorite company to follow.
