Alibaba Singles' Day sales hit $23 billion in first nine hours

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Inc on Monday said sales for its annual Singles’ Day shopping blitz hit 158.31 billion yuan ($22.63 billion) in its first nine hours, up 25% from 126.72 billion yuan at the same point last year.

Alibaba netted sales worth $30 billion on its platforms on Singles’ Day last year, dwarfing the $7.9 billion U.S. online sales for Cyber Monday. Yet the 27% sales growth was the lowest in the event’s 10-year history, spurring a search for fresh ideas.

Sales hit $1 billion in the first minute and eight seconds and reached 84 billion yuan in the first hour, up 22% from last year’s early haul of 69 billion yuan.
Singles’ Day was among the top trending topics on China’s Twitter-like Weibo microblogging platform on Monday morning, with users discussing what they spent their money on.

Alibaba has said it expects over 500 million users to participate in the shopping festival this year, about 100 million more than last year.

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