Two Chinese Websites Sold $5,750,000,000 Worth of Stuff in a Single Day!

Often we hear about China being the most important market for Google, or for General Motors or for Apple, or for… pretty much every blue chip company in North America. Of course everyone thinks of the Chinese economy as a good opportunity, but many people don’t understand how humongous it really is.

Take the Chinese Internet company Alibaba for instance. As Alibaba’s about to go public, they were forced to release financial information to stock market regulators. Included in that information was sales data about Alibaba’s two main shopping websites:

The Wall Street Journal reports hearing from sources that the combined sales volume on Taobao and Tmall hit $240 billion in 2013. On Single’s Day, which is essentially China’s version of Cyber Monday, Taobao and Tmall topped $5.75 billion in sales.

24 Hours / $5.75 Billion in Sales

Have you ever heard of such a statistic? It’s mind boggling really. Fortunately I’m smart enough to use a calculator and Google, so I broke it down for you:

• On Single’s Day, Tmall and Taobao sold $66,551 per second or $239,583,333 worth of goods every hour!
• To match the total sales of these two websites you’d need to combine Costco with Amazon, plus throw in McDonald’s!
• The amount of money Israel generates in its economy will be surpassed by these two websites next year. In fact, due to rounding errors, this may already be the case.
• When it goes public Alibaba will be the 9th most valuable company in the world!

When you see it like this it’s humbling, China is a much bigger opportunity than I ever realized. It’s no bloody wonder Taobao’s mascot is so excited!