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Singles' Day is the world's biggest shopping event. In less than a decade, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. turned a quirky celebration for unmarried young adults in China into a global extravaganza drawing in thousands of retailers and hundreds of millions of shoppers of all ages

Singles Day — the frenzied annual celebration of consumption and commerce that is China’s much larger version of Black Friday — began as a protest of sorts against Valentine’s Day, propelled by college students in the 1990s.

Now in its ninth year, the annual Chinese online shopping festival Singles’ Day (11 November) is no longer just about Alibaba, but has morphed into a nation-wide shopping craze with e-commerce players other than Alibaba taking up a substantial share of the pie as well.

After Singles Day became widespread in China it became a retail event heavily promoted by online marketplace Alibaba.com, which trademarked the term "Double 11" in 2012 and threatened legal action against media outlets that accepted advertising from competitors using the term.

While Black Friday and Cyber Monday get all the attention in the U.S., China's Singles Day puts them both to shame. Last year, more items were bought during the 24 hours of Singles Day than the entire combined Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the states.

Singles Day, Alibaba and its founder, Jack Ma, transformed the de facto holiday from an ‘anti-Valentine's Day’ for Chinese singletons to a global shopping festival back in 2009 – and made billions of dollars in the process.