Singles' Day, the Chinese shopping extravaganza which takes place annually on the 11th of November on the ecommerce site Alibaba, saw a record breaking day of sales this year. Alibaba sold a staggering 17.8 billion US dollars' worth of products this Singles' Day, a 32% rise on last year. This means that in terms of profits, Singles' Day dwarfs similar events in the West, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 6 million different products from 30,000 brands took part in Alibaba's event, and it seems that mobile shopping accounted for many of the sales. Alibaba has said that 82% of transactions were done on a mobile. The company's e-wallet, Alipay, saw over 1 billion transactions over the course of the day, up 48% on last year's Singles' Day.Â
