Alibaba Singles Day 2019 sales up 26% to $38.4 billion

Alibaba’s Singles Day 2019 saw an incredible $38.4 billion worth of sales in a single day making it the biggest ever single day’s sale in history. It’s an increase of around 26% on 2018 and firmly cements Singles Day as bigger than Black Friday Cyber Monday combined.

This was the first Single Day without Jack Ma, but Singles Day 2019 didn’t fail to delivery and I imagine Jack would be pleased to see the company he founded in 20 years ago continuing to grow.

There were three key themes this year – content, innovation and new brands to the Chinese audience. Content in China means live streaming – if you’re not demonstrating your product you’re not selling and so L’Oreal were live streaming non-stop for 24 hours. Consumers are also hungry for innovative products and new brands – One million new products were offered and 215 leading international brands such as Lancôme, SK-II, YSL Beauté, Givenchy and Shiseido debuted more than 240 11.11-themed special edition products.

22,000 international brands from 78 countries and regions participated in this year’s 11.11 on Tmall Global, Alibaba’s dedicated channel for cross-border e-commerce, providing an expansive international product selection for consumers.

Singles Day 2019 Key Milestones

00:00:00 – Singles Day starts
00:01:08 – Total GMV exceeds $1 billion
12:29:45 – Total GMV exceeds $10 billion
01:00:00 – One hour in and GMV exceeds $12 billion
01:01:32 – Sales exceed Singles Day 2015
01:26:07 – Sales exceed Singles Day 2016
06:28:00 – Total GMV exceeds $20 billion
10:04:49 – Sales exceed Singles Day 2017
15:57:18 – Total GMV exceeds $30 billion
16:31:12 – Sales exceed Singles Day 2018
18:31:00 – Number of delivery orders exceed the 1.042 billion from 2018
24:00:00 – Total GMV for Singles Day 2019 is $38.4 billion – up 26% on 2018

Delivering more than 1 billion products

Naturally now comes the delivery to part of the day and Chinese couriers will be working non-stop to get over a billion parcels to their destinations. This year, in an effort to promote sustainability, Cainiao and its partners will implement various online and offline initiatives to contribute to a greener 11.11.

• Recycling programs

  40,000 Cainiao stations and anadditional35,000 stations operated by its express courier partnerswill serve as recycling centers for consumers to drop off cardboard boxes. Consumers will be also be rewarded “green energy” points on Ant Forest for their recycling efforts.

• Nationwide Recycling Day

  Cainiao and its partners will make November 20tha day focused on the recycling of cardboard packaging.They will workto convert 75,000 locations into permanent recycling stations, where express courier companies can pick up used cardboard boxes and wrapping.

• Tmall trade-in programs

  Tmall will also host special “trade-in” programs to allow consumers to replace over 40,000 used electrical and digital products from 250 brands for new ones.