11/11 as by now most will know is the major sales day by Alibaba in China. So I suspect you might know that much but what do you really know what went on and what it meant.

Being based in the UK, as I am, you might compare it Black Friday here. In 2014 the total for the Country is estimated at about £850 million which is about US 1.3 billion. According to Forrester the online sales in the USA on the same day topped $1.5 billion.

Now let us look at Alibaba ( extracts taken from their web Site) for 2015

11.11 Global Shopping Festival 2015

Every year on November 11, Alibaba Group holds the world’s largest 24-hour online shopping event. The 11.11 Global Shopping Festival will commence on November 11 at midnight, China time. This year, we will use this occasion to launch a new series of initiatives in globalization, logistics, and mobile and omni-channel commerce to improve the shopping experience for buyers and sellers. Stay tuned with us, we will provide 11.11 transaction milestones here.

• 00:00:18, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has exceeded RMB100 million (approximately US$15.72 million)
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 79.66%

• 00:01:12, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has exceeded RMB1 billion (approximately US$157.2 million) 
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 81.82%

• About 00:14:00, Beijing Time
• The first order of 11.11 2015 was delivered by Cainiao’s partner RRS. 

• 01:00:00, Beijing Time
• Total GMV: RMB24.77 billion (approximately US$3.89 billion)
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 73.85%

• 04:26:31, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has reached RMB36.2 billion (approximately US$5.69 billion), exceeding the total GMV of 2013 11.11

• 07:45:42, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has reached RMB41.7 billion, exceeding the total desktop GMV of 2014 Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday (USD6.56 billion)

• 11:49:09, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has exceeded that of 2014 11.11 (RMB57.1 billion / US$8.97 billion)
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 71.61%

• 12:00:00, Beijing Time
• Total GMV has exceeded RMB57.61 billion (approximately US$9.05 billion) 
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 71.53%
• 24:00:00, Beijing Time
• Total GMV: RMB91.21 billion (approximately US$14.34 billion)
• Mobile GMV as % of total GMV: 68.67%
• No. of delivery orders received by Cainiao Logistics: 467 million
• No. of payment transactions processed by Alipay: 710 million
• No. of transactions at peak: 140,000 transactions / second
• % of buyers buying international products: 33%

The numbers by one company are staggering and should be looked at in comparison to those in the “Developed Economies” of the West.

So how may online companies do you know can fulfil orders of 14 minutes of an order being placed?

How many banks can process 140,000 transactions – a second?

How many banks can process 710 million transactions in a day?

How many banks can have just about 70% of those on hand held devices?

We now read that the Chinese are moving to a service economy and so as the fire power of this force moves into tertiary services not only for China but in due course (5-10 years) to the rest of the “Developed World” will you be ready to comprehend and compete.

At the same time as this took place I listened to a talk on the introduction of monitoring OTC transactions within the EU guidelines in order to protect the investor etc. For protection of the investor please read increase in transaction costs through process and monitoring which in the end means much lower returns to that investor.

I leave you to draw your conclusions and when you hear the numbers for this black Friday please compare them.