Chinese ecommerce giant Alibaba brought in $1 billion of sales in about 17 minutes of its Singles Day sale -- Singles Day being the equivalent of Black Friday in the company's home country.
[seealso slug=http://sale-online.click/2014/05/06/alibaba-ipo-explainer/%5D%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3ECompared to that, it took quite a long time for sales to get to $2 billion.
[01:00] In a little over an hour, the #1111sale exceeds USD 2 billion in GMV; 45%+ of it coming from mobile #Alibaba #singlesday #China— Alizila.com (@Alizila) November 10, 2014
Singles Day began in the early 1990s, and it's a numerological holiday: it celebrates the four 1s in the date, 11/11. Something of an anti-Valentine's day in China, the day is marked by parties and outings for single people -- as well as a torrent of online shopping. Alibaba brought in $5.75 billion on Singles Day 2013.
The company recently went public in the U.S. with a market capitalization of $230 billion -- larger than Amazon and close to Facebook. It holds the title of the largest IPO of all time, having raised $21.8 million.