Alibaba Posts $1 Billion in Sales in 5 Minutes on Singles' Day (bloomberg.com)

Alibaba Group posted $1 billion (6.81 billion yuan) of sales within the first five minutes of its Singles' Day sales, a 24-hour event that may offer clues on the health of the Chinese economy and its largest online retailer. From a report on Bloomberg:Investors are keeping a close eye on the annual Nov. 11 spending blitz that dwarfs Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S., to see if Alibaba can reprise the 60 percent leap in transactions to 91.2 billion yuan it managed last year. The e-commerce giant again turned up the star-wattage for 2016, enlisting Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson, sports celebrity David Beckham, basketball legend Kobe Bryant and pop-rock band One Republic to headline a pre-sale gala and drum up international attention. Pioneered by Alibaba in 2009 and since replicated by rivals including JD.com Inc., Singles' Day has become somewhat of a barometer of Chinese consumer sentiment.

Comments

Re:Does Alibaba matter to those in the west?

[tlhIngan]

Does this Amazon like company matter to those in the west? Just want to know. How much of this billion dollars was because of activity from the west?

How many of people in the west even know about Alibaba?

Well, very little in the west, but it's quite important as everything is on there. A lot of suppliers are, so if you're needing some random item from China, chances are you can order it online via Alibaba.

If you need a source of cheap cables, Alibaba would be where you wanted to go to get dozens of oddball cables for $5 shipped.

If you want to sell to Chinese, you would be wise to open an Alibaba storefront as well.

Re:How do they avoid extortion?

[Anonymous Coward]

china has no problem cutting off border routers to stop outside traffic and a DDOS from within china would be actual suicide.

Re:Does Alibaba matter to those in the west?

[NatasRevol]

They don't care. The East is bigger than the West.