Alibaba makes $14.3 billion in sales in just a day. More than Zimbabwe’s total GDP of $13.7B

James Bond actor Daniel Craig and Alibaba’s chairman Jack Ma appear during Tuesday night’s TV gala promoting the event. Photo: Reuters Via South China Morning Post

If you’ve been wondering what the size of the Chinese e-commerce market is, look further than Alibaba’s “Singles Day” sales today. The company announced that it generated US $14.3 billion in sales in just 24 hours. Alibaba’s Singles Day is a shopping event introduced in 2009 during which Alibaba encourages single Chinese people to spoil themselves with gifts on the day.

To put that $14.3B in context, consider that it’s more than Zimbabwe’s total GDP of 2014 which was $13.66B. GDP, the Gross Domestic Product, represents the total dollar value of all goods and services produced in the country.

Earlier in the day, Alibaba had announced that in hit US $5 Billion in just 90 minutes, sealing Singles Day’s place as the world’s biggest shopping day.

Other interesting facts about Alibaba and the Singles day:

• This year’s total sales are up 60% from 2014. The group made $9.3 billion in sales last year
• It took just half of the day to beat the 2014 record of $9.3bn
• 68% was through orders were made form from mobile devices
• One of the new sales channel pumping Alibaba’s Singles’ Day sales was Suning Commerce Group Co, in which it bought a 20% stake in August this year.
• To improve logistics capacity, Alibaba plans to deploy 1.7 million delivery employees, 5,000 warehouses, 400,000 vehicles and 200 airplanes.
• Alibaba accounts for more than 80% of China’s internet sales market.