China’s ecommerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Limited amassed a record RMB268.4bn ($38.4bn) in Singles’ Day sales.

The result over a 24-hour period outstrips total Asia Pacific duty free and travel retail revenue ($35bn) in 2018 and represents more than 50% of total global sales ($75.7bn) last year, based on Generation Research figures.

Despite dampened growth of +26% year-on-year, the online retail bonanza attracted over 200,000 brands, with one million new products launched.

FIRST EVENT IN NEW ERA

Of the 200,000 brands, 299 exceeded RMB100m ($14.3m) in sales and 15 of those generated more than RMB1bn ($143m).

The most popular included Apple, Bose, Estée Lauder, Gap, H&M, L’Oréal, Levi’s, Muji, Nestlé, Nike, Philips, The North Face, Under Armour and Uniqlo.

This year’s Singles’ Day event is the first for Alibaba since its legendary Co-founder Jack Ma stepped down as Chairman this year.

Alibaba Singles’ Day started in 2009 with just 27 merchants.

During the recent TFWA World Exhibition & Conference in Cannes, Alibaba and Amazon openly declared they are not seeking to establish a monopoly in DF&TR over other big retail players.

At the Trinity Forum 2019, Angel Zhao, President, Alibaba Global Business Group outlined the merits of Alipay, Alicloud and Fliggy Buy and explained how the platforms are serving travellers.

Watch out for the December issue of TRBusiness for a day two report of the Trinity Forum. For day one, click here.