China's Singles' Day shopping festival expected to break sale records amid COVID-19 pandemic: UK media

LONDON -- With the help of "revenge spending" from the COVID-19 pandemic, sales of Wednesday's "China's Singles' Day" online shopping festival, which is similar to "Black Friday" in Western countries, is expected to break new records, the BBC reported Tuesday.

Noting that "China's Singles' Day", which falls on Nov. 11 annually, is the world's biggest 24-hour online shopping event, with 1.9 billion products ordered and delivered last year, the BBC said, adding that it is thought that pent-up demand from the pandemic will help to break new sale records.

Robot cleaners, vacuums and toolboxes are all expected to be popular items for shopping carts. And luxury brands are also hoping to get a boost, as millions of Chinese have been unable to travel overseas because of the pandemic, said the BBC.

"We anticipate ongoing international restrictions will cause a meaningful shift in Chinese consumers buying luxury online," Michael Norris at the market research firm Agency China told the BBC.

"Luxury brands have also risen to the occasion, with an estimated doubling in the number of luxury brands participating in Singles' Day," Norris was quoted as saying.

Last year, China's Singles' Day sales on Alibaba's e-commerce platform TMall reached more than 210 billion yuan (about 31.7 billion U.S. dollars), double that of Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, with sales hitting 1 billion U.S. dollars in a little more than one minute of trading, according to the BBC.

This year, Singles' Day kicked off early with an online selling spree between Nov. 1 to Nov. 3 to cater to the growing demand from Chinese consumers. Wednesday will feature more than 350,000 local and international brands and even includes cars and houses for sale, said the BBC.

First designed by Tmall on Nov. 11, 2009, the online shopping event has developed from a domestic online sales promotion to a global shopping carnival over the past decade.