From a celebration of singlehood to global shopping phenomenon: looking back at 10 years of 11.11

As the 11.11 shopping festival enters its 10th year, its incredible growth shows no signs of stopping, consistently beating out the four-day Black Friday to Cyber Monday period in terms of sales year after year.
The festival saw four times more sales than Black Friday in 2017, with more than $1bn being spent in just the first two minutes after midnight. E-commerce giant Alibaba, credited with creating the global shopping phenomenon, saw its gross merchandise volume clocking RMB168.3 billion, bre