This year's Singles' Day shopping festival was record-breaking

Just when you thought Singles' Day couldn't possibly get any bigger, this year's shopping spectacular has managed to smash all previous records, proving that nothing cures loneliness better than a bit of retail therapy. At this rate though, calling Singles' Day an annual retail event is a bit like calling Godzilla a lizard. Last Singles' Day, Alibaba generated a monstrous 17.8 billion USD, compared to Cyber Monday's 6.6 billion USD and Amazon Prime Day's piddly 1 billion USD.

This year, bargain hunters from 225 countries across the globe took part, with many also tuning in to catch this year's Singles' Day gala (think Super Bowl halftime show meets Olympic opening ceremony). Featuring performances from Pharrell and Jessie J, Aussie actress Nicole Kidman also made an appearance, introducing a short kung fu film starring Alibaba founder Jack Ma (yes, really). 

To get the full scope of just how massive Singles' Day is, check out this list of some of the more astounding stats from this year's bonanza. 

168 billion RMB

That's the total amount of money spent by lonely shoppers on November 11. It took just 13 hours for this year's Singles' Day to bypass last year's record of 121 million RMB, eventually closing out the day with a 39 percent increase in sales. 

3 minutes, 1 second

The absolutely infinitesimal amount of time it took for sales to hit 10 billion RMB, beating last year's record of 3 minutes 57 seconds. Overall, some of the most impressive stats occurred just after Singles' Day kicked off, with the sales tally hitting 100 million RMB after just 11 seconds and 1 billion RMB after two minutes.

256,000 per second

At its peak, Alipay was handling roughly 256,000 transactions per second, more than double last year's record. Over the course of the entire day, Alipay would go on to process a total of 1.48 billion transactions (up 41 percent) with over 90 percent of total purchases made via smartphone. 

812 million

The number of parcels delivered from Singles' Day purchases alone. By Wednesday this week, that number's expected to top out at 1.5 billion. 

9.30am

With the expectation of speedy delivery from shoppers, Chinese railway services added additional high-speed trains to expedite the arrival of Singles' Day purchases. By Saturday morning, over 100 million parcels had already been processed and dispatched. 

140,000

More than 140,000 brands, both local and international, participated this year, in comparison to only 100,000 last year. The top five imported brands were Swisse, Aptamil, Kao Merries, Moony and Bio Island, reflecting a growing trend in taking health supplements. 

82

Singles' Day helped 82 brands surpass over 100 million RMB in sales, with some of the biggest winners being Apple, Nike, Adidas, Xiaomi, Uniqlo, Estee Lauder, Zara, Dyson and L'Oreal. 

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