China's biggest shopping event: Setback for Alibaba as Singles Day left without superhosts
When Alibaba kicks off its Singles Day extravaganza on Monday, it will for the first time in years not be headlined by its two mega sales stars, casting a pall over China's biggest shopping event and leaving brands guessing how well they will do.
The event, which the e-commerce giant has built up from a one day Nov. 11 sale to a nearly two-week festival, will begin with seven days of pre-sales to allow shoppers on its Taobao and Tmall marketplaces to place deposits to secure goods later at a discounted price.
In recent years, pre-sales were headlined by Li Jiaqi and Viya, known respectively as China's livestreaming sales king and queen who sold everything from lipstick to rocket launchers on Taobao Live, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's livestreaming channel.
Last year, they pre-sold a combined 18.9 billion yuan ($2.61 billion) worth of products on opening day, accounting for about 3.5% of the entire event's takings of 540.3 billion yuan.
But there will be no Viya this year. She has remained offline since being fined for tax evasion in December. Li, also known as Austin, has been absent from Alibaba's Singles Day marketing, after he disappeared for three months with netizens speculating that one of his livestreams had offended Chinese censors. Alibaba declined to comment on his participation in this year's event.
Li returned to screens last month but remains lower key than before his disappearance. People close to Li told Reuters cosmetics products will make up only 30% of his line up this Singles' Day, compared with 40% last year, with more necessities and Chinese brands to be featured.
While there are thousands of people in China that still hawk products on Taobao Live, the two had accounted for the lion's share of
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
