Singles Day opening shopping festival gala sees huge success

The Singles Day shopping festival saw booming sales during its grand opening that kicked off at 8 pm on Tuesday, with high-quality and intelligent products, and livestreaming sessions gaining popularity among Chinese consumers.

Data from Tmall, Alibaba's business-to-customer platform, showed that, in the first hour of the promotional event, the turnover of 71,900 brands exceeded that of Oct 31 last year.

The transaction volume of premium consumer electronic devices, such as interchangeable-lens digital cameras and 3D printing equipment, surged about 100 percent and 400 percent year-on-year, respectively, in the first hour of the gala, Tmall said.

Consumers increasingly prefer snatching up bargains via livestreaming on e-commerce platforms, with the sales from 29 livestreaming rooms of Taobao Live, Alibaba's livestreaming arm, surpassing 100 million yuan ($13.7 million) during a brief time.

Sales of home appliance products via e-commerce giant JD's online marketplaces exceeded 1 billion yuan within just 30 seconds, while the transaction volume of mobile phones such as iPhone, Xiaomi, Honor and Huawei skyrocketed 100 percent year-on-year in the first 10 minutes of the promotion, according to JD.

The turnover of gaming laptops jumped 270 percent year-on-year in the first 10 minutes, JD said. In addition, top-tier luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Dior saw their sales increase more than 3 times compared with same period of last year.