Singles Day sales to get tremendous lift from livestream events, as U.S. retailers play catch-up

In fact, Singles Day has already produced one remarkable stat from October 21st: Alibaba sold a staggering $1.1 billion in merchandise in 30 minutes through its Taobao Live video service. That’s $36.7 million in sales happening every minute through live video shopping streams from internet celebrity influencers. To put that number in perspective, Q... See more

alibaba also worked to make live commerce a key highlight of singles' day. sellers were incentivized to participate: livestreaming merchants reaped traffic. alibaba also invested in a spate of promo events, like livestreaming the annual gala and eight-hour fashion show.

The total scale of the country's livestreaming e-commerce industry reached 433.8 billion yuan (about 65.69 billion U.S. dollars) in 2019 and is expected to double by the end of 2020, a report by global accounting firm KPMG and AliResearch showed.