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Alibaba warehouse in Wuxi: This year Katy Perry fueled the shopping spree
Photo: ALY SONG / REUTERS
China's online giant Alibaba set a record sales during the world's biggest discount battle.
As the company announced on Wednesday half an hour after the official start, it sold goods worth the equivalent of 372.3 billion yuan (about 47.7 billion euros) as part of "Singles Day".
Unlike in previous years, Alibaba has been luring customers this time since the beginning of November with shopping windows and special offers that are incorporated into the result.
The record is therefore not directly comparable with the result of the previous year, when the group turned over 268.4 billion yuan.
According to its own information, Alibaba offered two million products, more than twice as many goods on its platforms as in the previous year.
At its peak, 583,000 orders were placed per second.
Other Chinese trading platforms also expected strong sales on Wednesday.
From anti-Valentine's Day to a consumer festival
The "Singles Day" on November 11th was originally considered by students in China as a kind of anti-Valentine's Day for single people, because the date consists of only ones.
In 2009, Alibaba began to offer its customers high discounts for 24 hours that day.
Competitors followed suit.
The strong sales at "Singles Day" for Alibaba this year were overshadowed by several bad news that the group had to accept in the past few days.
Last week, Chinese regulators surprisingly stopped the IPO of the financial subsidiary Ant Group.
There are also concerns that regulators in China are trying to curb the enormous market power of Alibaba and other Chinese tech companies with new rules.
In addition to electronics and cosmetic items, analysts expected particularly high demand for luxury items at this year's "Singles Day".
Since the Chinese would prefer to buy these on trips abroad, which are not possible this year due to the corona pandemic, customers stocked up on "Singles Day".
As usual, Alibaba had ushered in the shopping festival the evening before with a big gala.
This year Katy Perry appeared as a star guest, who could only be switched on due to the corona pandemic.
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dab / dpa