Retailers report growth in Singles' Day sales
The Singles' Day shopping extravaganza soared to new heights this year, as shoppers took advantage of deep discounts offered by retailers last Saturday.
In Singapore, online sales for this year's 11.11 sale rose by 60 per cent from last year. All online engagements, including browsing and purchasing, were 2.4 times higher, said marketing technology company Criteo.
Nov 11 is known as Singles' Day because of the repeated digit, one, in the date.
Chinese Internet giant Alibaba, which launched the first 11.11 sale in 2009, set a record $34.6 billion in sales this year.
Retailers here also showed strong gains.
Qoo10 raked in $6 million in Singapore sales, nearly doubling last year's $3.5 million. Top sellers were beauty products, footwear and gadgets.
Local e-commerce firm ShopBack received close to 6,000 orders - six times higher than normal - in an hour from people in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan.
Mr Vincent Wong, country head of ShopBack Singapore, said: "Almost 60 per cent of the web and app traffic came from new customers. This signalled the possibility that the Singles' Day hype has encouraged people who did not have the habit of shopping online to jump on the bandwagon."
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