Diamonds to diapers, all available for sale

EIGHTEEN HOURS INTO THE EVENT, ALIBABA SAID THE GROSS VALUE OF SALES PROCESSED BY ITS ONLINE PAYMENT SYSTEM ALIPAY WAS NEARLY $21 BILLION.

BEIJING: E-commerce giant Alibaba notched up sales of nearly $21 billion as China’s masses shopped online for everything from diapers to diamonds during the annual celebration of consumption that is the country’s much larger version of Black Friday.

Sales during Singles Day, also known as Double 11 for the November 11 date, blazed to $1.5 billion within three minutes of starting at midnight on Saturday, as people rushed to snap up bargains during the world’s biggest one-day online shopping festival.

The event launched in 2009 by Alibaba ended up shattering the previous year’s sales mark, as it does every year.

On Friday night, Alibaba hosted a lavish gala in Shanghai, directed by one of the producers behind the 2016 Academy Awards. Celebrities such as Nicole Kidman, Pharrell Williams and Maria Sharapova helped countdown the moments before the 60,000 participating global brands released their Singles Day deals to shoppers.

By comparison, American shoppers spent more than $5 billion last year shopping online on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday, according to Adobe, which tracks such data. Total online retail sales in India during 2016 were estimated to be worth about $16 billion.