JD.com Claims $19 Bln In Sales On Singles' Day

(RTTNews) - Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com (JD) said Sunday that transaction volumes on its platform for the Singles' Day sales period grew more than 50 percent from last year to 127.1 billion yuan, or about $19.1 billion. According to JD.com, this year's sales included eleven days of transactions.

Singles' Day is an annual 24-hour buying frenzy that takes place in China on November 11. It has emerged as the world's biggest shopping event and exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S. It is a festival widespread among young mainland Chinese people to celebrate the fact they are proud of being single.

JD.com said it began its sales event on November 1 in order to reduce delivery bottlenecks and to give users a chance to spend more time online to make their purchasing decisions. The company noted that November 11 made up by far the largest spike in sales.

According to JD.com, it sold more than 20,000 tons of fresh products, including 500,000 Thailand black tiger shrimp and more than 2 million hairy crabs.

In the beauty products segment, the company sold 55 million facial masks, while sales of L'Oreal products were three times as much as last year.

In home appliance sales, JD.com said that television sales reached 100 million in one minute, while sales of air conditioners reached 500 million yuan in a 30-minute period. The company also sold 100,000 microwave ovens in sixty minutes.

Meanwhile, JD.com's rival Alibaba Group Holding Limited (BABA) reported Singles' Day gross merchandise volume or GMV that was settled through its mobile wallet app Alipay on November 11, 2017 of 168.2 billion yuan, or $25.3 billion. This represented an increase of 39 percent compared to the prior year.

The company noted that total mobile GMV settled through Alipay was approximately 90 percent of total GMV, compared to 82 percent last year.