Singles’ Day sales start strong on first day as China’s domestic consumption recovers from Covid-19 impact
- Alibaba customers checked out 14 million discounted items from their online shopping carts at the stroke of midnight on Sunday, when Singles’ Day sales began
- On JD.com, first-day sales were 90 per cent higher than last year, showing that China’s consumer market is on an ‘upwards trend’
Hangzhou-based Alibaba, which created the annual Singles’ Day online shopping festival in 2009, said that when the clock struck midnight on the first day of sales on Sunday, hundreds of millions of consumers flocked to its Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms and checked out 14 million discounted items that they had added to their shopping carts earlier.
One hundred brands hit sales of 100 million yuan (US$15 million) on Alibaba’s platforms in 111 minutes after the online shopping extravaganza started, the company added in a statement on Monday.
Alibaba is China’s largest e-commerce group and the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, on JD.com, the country’s second-largest e-commerce platform, sales were 90 per cent higher than last year on the first day of the shopping festival. “The booming opening sales have once again proven that with coronavirus pandemic prevention measures becoming a normal part of life ... China’s consumer market is on an upwards trend in the mid to long term,” the platform said in a separate statement on Monday.
Singles’ Day – the world’s largest online shopping festival – usually takes place on November 11 on Alibaba’s platforms, but the company added another official sales window from November 1 to 3 this year to allow more brands and businesses to participate. JD.com began official sales on November 1 as with previous years, but added a pre-sales period starting from October 21, the same date that Alibaba’s pre-sales began.