"Lei Shujie, a designer in Shanghai, piled up a wish list for the quirky holiday dubbed "Singles Day" that has grown into China's — and possibly the world's — busiest online shopping day.
[...]
Singles Day was begun by Chinese college students in the 1990s as a version of Valentine's Day for people without romantic partners. The timing was based on the date: Nov. 11, or "11.11" — four singles. Unattached young people would treat each other to dinner or give gifts to woo that special someone and end their single status.
[...]
Companies that rushed to cash in on the holiday ranged from Alibaba Group, operator of China's biggest e-commerce platforms, to rival platforms such as 360buy Ltd., mom-and-pop companies that sell online and delivery services.
"This is very, very big for us," Steve Wang, vice president of Tmall.com and head of website operations, said in a phone interview before sales started.
The 50,000-plus merchants on Alibaba's consumer-oriented Taobao and Tmall.com platforms, took in a total of 19.1 billion yuan ($3 billion) from midnight Saturday to midnight Sunday, the company announced early Monday.
That would top the total of $1.25 billion that research firm comScore said U.S. online retailers took in last year on Cyber Monday and might make Singles Day the biggest e-commerce sales day on record.
The spending binge will be welcome news for communist leaders who want to shift the basis of growth in the world's second-largest economy from trade and investment to consumer spending and service industries. Weak global demand for Chinese exports has added to the urgency of ramping up domestic consumption."
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