Over the past six years, China's Singles Day has been transformed from not just 'a' global shopping event - but 'the' only true global shopping event.
It was dreamed up in 2009 as China's answer to the United States' Black Friday and Cyber Monday one-day shopping events, offering once-off savings on big ticket consumer items.
Up until that point, e-commerce was yet to go 'mainstream' in China and the one-day savings offered by internet retailers helped to bring more shoppers online.
The day was originally invented by students in the 1990's to celebrate single life as a kind of anti-Valentines Day.
The holiday is celebrated on November 11th because the date, 11.11 is said to resemble 'bare branches' a Chinese expression for bachelors. The company openly admits that the date was picked because it falls during a time of the year when sales were traditionally poor.
Alibaba is now more than twice the size of E-Bay and Amazon put together, but it is not a single entity, it is a group of online market places.
After the success of the initial Singles Day sales event - a flock of new Chinese retailers were exposed to the potential reach that selling online could offer.
The company established its market dominance by working with retailers to establish a network of online sellers across China, while also building a distribution network to get goods to customers.
It was the first company to aggressively target online retail in the country - in recent years it has been keen to stay ahead of its competitors as consumers go mobile.
Alibaba did this by offering additional discounts on mobile devices - and even making mobile games that unlocked further savings when completed.
By last year 45% of its 11.11 purchases were mobile - while 73.9% of the purchases made in the first hour of last night came from mobile devices.
As Irish people woke up this morning, Alibaba had already set a one-day record for online sales - with half a day of trading remaining.
Alibaba is now working with international brands who are keen to sell in to the growing Chinese market - and shipping to an increasing number of counties, including the US, UK, Brazil and Russia.
It held a four hour variety show on Chinese TV on the eve of the event to use as one last marketing push.
It featured appearances from a host of Chinese stars, as well as Daniel Criag, and Kevin Spacey in character as President Frank Underwood from Netflix original series, House of Cards.
"If this Singles Day is the excuse you've been waiting for to spoil yourself with a little online shopping, then I must say I am more than a little jealous," he says to Chinese shoppers in the somewhat bizarre promo spot.
He continues to quote Alibaba CEO, Jack Ma, saying, "Today is hard - tomorrow will be worse - but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine," a line from an interview with Forbes' Rebecca Fannin in which he discussed his struggles in his early days as an entrepreneur.
Mr Underwoods comments are telling - all of the recent economic indicators suggest that economic activity is slowing and that there are signs that the country's boom is maturing and that 'hard' times may be on the way.
Rather than this spending spree being seen as a sign of improving consumer confidence - it has now become common for buyers to save for 11.11 to splash out on goods that they would not normally be able to afford.
The bigger picture is that inflation is down - the prices of non-food goods fell by 0.3% in October. The latest industrial output statistics from China overnight show manufacturing output rose by just 5.6% year on year to the end of October – lower than the expected 5.8%.
