 "The logo of Alibaba Group is seen at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, China")
Chinese retailer Alibaba Group said on Monday that sales for its annual Singles’ Day shopping blitz crossed the $30 billion mark at 4.31 pm (0831 GMT), putting the event on track to set a record in its 11th year.
The figure is equivalent to over 80 per cent of US rival Amazon.com’s online store sales in the latest quarter and matches takings across Alibaba's e-commerce platforms on Singles' Day last year. Sales growth for the full 24-hour event, however, is likely to fall short of the year earlier, analysts said, held back by a slowing overall e-commerce industry in China at a time when the country’s economic expansion is heading toward a historic low.
Sales hit $1 billion after one minute and eight seconds and reached 158.31 billion yuan ($22.6 billion) in the first nine hours, up 25 per cent from the same point last year, Alibaba said. Alibaba turned China's informal Singles' Day into a shopping event in 2009 and built it into the world's biggest online sales fest, dwarfing Cyber Monday in the US which took in $7.9 billion last year.
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