Cyber Monday ? Childs play. Prime Day ? No way. Black Friday ? Pfft.
The biggest online shopping day of our time is Singles Day, a Chinese holiday on Nov. 11. (Formerly a minor holiday, it gets its name from its date in numerals 11/11). Chinese online marketplace Alibaba first promoted the holiday as a sales event in 2009; the day has since grown to become an online behemoth.
Last year, Alibaba did $14.3 billion worth of sales on Singles Day alone. Shoppers spent $5 billion in the first 90 minutes; its peak, Alibaba handled 86,000 transactions per second.
By comparison, online sales in the U.S. spanning the five-day period from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday amounted to $11.1 billion. Cyber Monday the U.S. single biggest online shopping day looks downright anemic by comparison: