Dive Brief:

• Over 100 brands participating in Alibaba's Global Shopping Festival reached RMB 100 million ($15 million) in gross merchandise volume in less than two hours during the first sales period, the company announced on Wednesday. Among the brands that saw rapid sales were Nike, Adidas, Apple and Estée Lauder, according to a press release emailed to Retail Dive. 

• Beauty products brought in more than RMB 10 billion in gross merchandise volume, surpassing 150% year-over-year sales growth during the first hour of the sales event. Estée Lauder's Tmall shop was the first brand to make more than RMB 1 billion during the event, the company said. 

• Almost 200 luxury brands are participating in this year's 11.11 sales festival, including Montblanc and IWC Schaffhausen. Cartier, which displayed more than 400 timepieces and jewelry items during its Taobao Live show, attracted 770,000 viewers in two hours, per the press release.

Dive Insight:

This year the Global Shopping Festival expanded to take place during two shopping windows: Nov. 1 through Nov. 3 and Nov. 11. The platform also added pre-sales events and noted a 90% increase in Tmall Global's gross merchandise volume on its first day of pre-sales. 

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted more traffic to e-commerce, Alibaba's Singles Day events brought in billions of dollars in sales last year, in 2018 and in 2017. The e-commerce platform said that sales results from its first shopping window demonstrate the return of Chinese consumer spending as well as the market's importance for global and emerging brands. 

Here in the U.S., Amazon delayed its Prime Day sales event, which is normally slated for July. Once the retailer moved the event to mid-October, Walmart, Target and Best Buy unveiled competing sales events.