Alibaba Singles' Day sales hit $31 billion

A giant electronic screen at the media center in Shanghai shows the total gross merchandise volume from online shopping on Alibaba marketplaces Tmall and Taobao on November 11, reaching 213.5 billion yuan (30.7 billion U.S. dollars) during Singles' Day or 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. [Photo: IC]

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba cashed a record 213.5 billion yuan or 30.7 billion dollars in sales on Sunday during its 24-hour online retail frenzy Singles' Day, also known as 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.

Shoppers in China and across the world snapped up hot items including iPhones, furniture and milk powder, with Alibaba recording roughly 10 billion dollars in sales in the first hour after midnight.

The company surpassed last year's full-day sales record of 168 billion yuan in just under 16 hours.

Stats show more consumers are turning to imported goods.

Fuxing bullet trains between Beijing and Changsha help to deliver goods bought on Single's Day on November 11, 2018. [Photo: IC]

In the first minutes of midnight trading, the top three destinations for imported goods on Tmall Global, the dedicated cross-border portal, were Japan, the United States and South Korea.

Belinda Chen is the general manager of the watch department of online retailer JD.com. She said they also tracked sales during the event, and found that imported goods are picking up steam.

"Well, imported goods continue to be one of the major trends for Singles Day. As you can see, we have high growth for imported goods from the US, Japan, and all across the world. Especially strong are the female categories for example diapers, and personal care categories. And interestingly this year we see very strong growth for home appliances and some 3-C categories as well."

Chinese workers sort parcels, most of which are from Singles' Day online shopping, at the largest smart logistics base in Asia, Suning Yuncang (Cloud Warehouse) of Suning Group, during the November 11 Singles' Day shopping spree in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, November 11, 2018. [Photo: IC]

JD.com, which launched its Singles Day sales on November 1, said cumulative sales amounted to over 150 billion yuan through Sunday.

Research from global consultancy Oliver Wyman predicted that around 57 percent of surveyed consumers intended to buy overseas goods and such sales would make up one-third of total consumer spending.