In his 12-hour-long show, Li Jiaqi presented 439 different products from makeup to gadgets and sold 10.65 billion yuan. Weiya pulled in 8.25 billion yuan.
The Singles Day annual shopping spree kicks off on October 20. Photo from CFP
By CHENG Lu
Livestreaming influencers Austin Li Jiaqi and Weiya sold goods worth 18.8 billion yuan (US$2.9 billion) on October 20, the first day of Alibaba’s latest shopping spree.
In his 12-hour-long show, Li presented 439 different products from makeup to gadgets and sold 10.65 billion yuan. Weiya pulled in 8.25 billion yuan. The third-ranked Cherie was a long way back and failed to break the billion threshold. Last year, half a trillion yuan of sales were made on November 11.
November 11, or Singles Day, used to be a self-effacing meme among university students as the numeral “1” stands for bachelordom. In 2009, Alibaba turned it into a shopping festival.
The pre-sale kicked off at 8pm Wednesday night, four hours earlier than last year so that viewers didn’t have to stay up late. By 11pm, both Li and Weiya had more than 200 million viewers.
The second presale starts at 8pm on November 1.
