Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group said orders made during its Singles’ Day mega-shopping festival had exceeded $56 billion by Wednesday morning, as consumers sought to cash in on a deluge of discounts, reported Reuters.
Alibaba launched the annual online blitz early this year, with two primary discount periods taking place from Nov. 1 through Nov. 3 and again on Nov. 11. The company will calculate gross merchandise volume (GMV) over the full 11-day period, as opposed to the usual 24 hours, said Reuters.
As of 12:30 a.m. local time (1630 GMT) on Nov. 11, the campaign’s GMV had surpassed RMB 372.3 billion ($56.3 billion) with the order rate hitting a record peak of 583,000 per second, Alibaba said.
Alibaba has said it will introduce more than 2 million new products, double last year’s amount. Other companies such as Douyin – the Chinese version of ByteDance’s TikTok – JD.com and Pinduoduo are also holding their own Singles Day shopping events.
