China’s Singles’ Day Sales Reach $25.4B

Saturday, Nov. 11, was China’s annual Singles’ Day, an informal holiday that originated in the ’90s to celebrate being single. Now, largely associated with online marketplace Alibaba (Hangzhou, China), it’s an annual discount-shopping holiday.

Within the first two minutes of the discounts, which began at midnight Saturday morning local time, the e-commerce site hit $1 billion in sales; and in just over 13 hours, sales climbed past $18 billion.

The sales promotion ended with a total of $25.4 billion in sales, 40 percent higher than its 2016 record-setting $17.8 billion, reports CNN Money.