Singles Day was a home run for Alibaba.
The Chinese ecommerce giant posted more than $9 billion in sales for the unofficial Nov. 11 holiday, which is also known as the 11.11 Shopping Festival considered to be the world's biggest online retail sales day.
Analysts had expected Alibaba to make at least $7 billion this year; the company brought in $1 billion in just the first 17 minutes of the holiday (last year, Alibaba made $5.75 billion on Singles Day).
[20:43] Total GMV for 11.11 Shopping Festival exceeded USD 8 billion of which 42.9% was generated from mobile #1111sale— Alizila.com (@Alizila) November 11, 2014
Looking ahead, CEO Jack Ma says he wants to make Singles Day a global shopping holiday by 2019. One hitch in that plan: Nov. 11 is Veterans Day in the United States.
In the early '90s, Alibaba started Singles Day, a numerological holiday that 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, which held the largest U.S. IPO of all time, was flirting with a $300 billion valuation on Tuesday.
Below, Ma explains how he'd like to make Singles Day a global holiday: