A Chinese holiday that began as a joke has become the biggest online shopping day in the world, crushing even Cyber Monday and Black Friday — and this year's event already annihilated 2014's spending record. Singles' Day started as an ironic anti-Valentine's Day celebration of people who aren't in relationships; it isn't a traditional holiday in China. Fittingly, Singles' Day is always held on 11/11 — because the date is full of the loneliest number.
The holiday's popularity is only growing: 2015 just shattered 2014's record of $9 billion in sales, exceeding it by noon in China. And the day isn't even over yet — The New York Times predicts this year could see as much as $13.8 billion spent in total. To help encourage buyers to wait until November 11 to splurge, steep discounts are offered all day long by the Chinese mega e-commerce website Alibaba, which controls 80 percent of the nation's online shopping market.
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