Black Friday, Cyber Monday still smaller than Singles Day

Black Friday’s online sales are exploding. But,
Alibaba’s Singles Day is still bigger.
Alibaba

• Cyber
  Monday online sales hit $7.9 billion this year, up
  19.3% from 2017. 
• While Cyber Monday set American online shopping records, it
  was far less than Alibaba’s Singles
  Day sales — even when combined
  with Black Friday sales.
• Here is how the biggest online shopping days so far in 2018
  measure up. 

As
the Black Friday dust settles, it is time to see how the
kickoff to this year’s holiday shopping season measured up. 

According to the National Retail Federation, 41.4 million people
shopped only online from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday.

That’s more than six million more than the 34.7 million who
shopped exclusively in stores.

That led to new online sales records, with major shopping days
like Cyber Monday and Black Friday seeing double-digit sales
growth over 2017 figures. 

Still, the growth wasn’t enough for the American holiday shopping
season to catch up with
Alibaba’s Singles Day.

Read more:

Alibaba just had the biggest online shopping day of all
time

The day of e-commerce deals on November 11, or 11/11,
generated more than $4.68 billion in sales in its first
10 minutes. Twenty minutes in, sales had surpassed $6.5 billion —
exceeding total Black Friday online sales, according to Adobe
Analytics data. 

Skye Gould/BI Graphics

Here’s how online sales in the kickoff to holiday shopping have
measured up against Singles Day: 

• Singles Day:
  $30.8 billion in GMV
  (gross merchandise volume), up 27% from 2017
• Cyber Monday:  $7.9 billion, up 19.3%
• Black Friday: $6.22 billion, up 23.6% 
• Thanksgiving Day: $3.7 billion, up 28%

And, a few more sales comparisons: 

• Amazon Prime Day:
  Shoppers spent roughly $4.2 billion at
  the e-commerce giant over the 36-hour event in July,
  according to Wedbush Securities Inc. analyst Michael
  Pachter.
• Wednesday before Thanksgiving: Online sales
  hit $2.4 billion, up 31.8%, the biggest year-over-year
  sales increase of the last week. 
• US Singles Day sales: American shoppers
  spent $1.82 billion on Singles Day, according to
  Adobe data, up 29.1% from 2017. 

Alibaba is determined to continue its e-commerce dominance,
pushing for growth to keep Singles Day in the top spot for years
to come. 

“Everywhere I go, which is pretty much everywhere in the world,
there are not very many people who do not know about 11/11,”

Alibaba president Michael Evans told Business Insider on Singles
Day in Shanghai.

“Many people ask the question — how can we participate next year?
People are very interested, I think partly because they’ve heard
of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and they think that’s quite
big.”

He continued: “They’ve heard of Amazon Prime Day. But, we sold as
much in five minutes as Amazon sold in an entire Prime Day.”