Alibaba earns $1.5 billion in 12 minutes on `Chinese Black Friday`

Alibaba earns $1.5 billion in 12 minutes on `Chinese Black Friday`. November. 12, 2015 10:23. bonhong@donga.com.

This is the seventh year of "Singles Day," an Internet shopping mall sales event that is also known as "Chinese Black Friday." On Wednesday when this year`s event started, Alibaba broke new sales records as Chinese customers as well as international buyers all flocked into the website at the same time to buy products.

Within 18 seconds after Wednesday midnight, the sales profit already reached 100 million yuan and the profit reached one billion yuan within 72 seconds. One billion yuan was reached within six minutes in 2013 and two minutes in 2014, respectively. Some 12 minutes and 28 seconds was spent to reach 10 billion yuan this year, whereas it took 38 minutes and 28 seconds last year.

A whopping 74.8 percent of the 10 billion yuan in sales was made via cell phones, ushering in the "era of shopping with cell phones." The online shopping mall Alibaba, which first invented Singles Day, earned 57.1 billion yuan this year and 42.6 percent of it was made from purchases by cell phone. As for the discount range, a 50 percent discount was the most common, but some products that were originally 40,000 won (34.6 U.S. dollars) to 50,000 won (43.25 dollars) were sold for just hundreds of won (less than 70 cents). Alibaba has published this year`s slogan, "Borderless Internet Shopping Mall." Reportedly, customers from over 180 countries and regions purchased from the mall.

The first buyer on Wednesday was Qu from Chaoyang District, Beijing, who bought a television at much lower price, 600 yuan cheaper than its original cost, which was delivered to the door within 14 minutes after payment.

In this event, over six million products were sold by over 40,000 companies and over 30,000 brands. Among the sellers were about 5,000 international brands from 25 countries and regions including the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Korea. A new word Chitu (meaning eating dust to survive) has been created in China, referring to those who went on a shopping spree on Singles Day and ran out of money afterwards.