Alibaba Group Holding kicked off direct sales for its annual Singles’ Day shopping festival on Monday, with initial figures surpassing last year’s performance—a sign of strengthening domestic consumption during China’s biggest online retail event, reports the South China Morning Post. Since direct sales began on Taobao and Tmall at 8pm on Monday, 80 brands had exceeded RMB 100 million ($13.8 million) in sales within the first hour, while more than 30,000 brands doubled their takings from a year earlier, according to data released by the company.
Alibaba said this year’s event had shown “faster growth.”
As in previous years, beauty products remained one of the strongest categories, with eight brands each surpassing RMB 100 million in sales within the first 10 minutes.