Alibaba Singles Day Opens Faster as 80 Brands Top 100 Million Yuan in First Hour

Brands race past sales milestones as shoppers seek discounts

Eighty brands each exceeded 100 million yuan in sales, roughly $14 million, in the first hour after Alibaba opened direct sales for its 2025 Singles Day festival at 8 pm on Monday. More than 30,000 brands doubled their takings compared with a year earlier, according to company figures, giving Taobao and Tmall a faster opening than last year.

Beauty and electronics led the rush. Eight beauty brands each passed 100 million yuan within the first ten minutes. Within two hours, iPhone sales through Apple's official Tmall store exceeded the full day total for the same period last year, Alibaba said.

AirPods 4, Apple Watch S11, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max and the Nintendo Switch each generated more than 10 million yuan in the first hour. The opening followed a strong presale phase, when 35 brands crossed 100 million yuan in the first hour and 1,802 brands doubled their turnover.

Alibaba is pairing those discounts with a broader change in how people shop. Its Qwen artificial intelligence models now help power search and recommendations on Taobao and Tmall, while instant retail connects online orders to nearby stores. The company is also extending the promotion to 20 international markets.

The early figures show shoppers responding quickly to deals, fresh products and loyalty benefits in a cautious consumer market. The commercial challenge extends beyond attracting orders: merchants must also manage discounts, cancellations, returns and delivery costs across the longest Singles Day season on record.

As of October 22, the opening milestones are the first measures of a festival that has expanded from a single shopping day into nearly four weeks of promotions. Alibaba and its rivals are competing to capture spending before customers divide their purchases among different apps.

A longer calendar changes the shopping race

Major platforms began promotions as early as the first half of October. Singles Day, also called Double Eleven, once concentrated shopping into a 24 hour extravaganza. This year's extended schedule gives customers more time to compare offers and plan larger baskets, while giving platforms more opportunities to secure purchases.

JD, Pinduoduo and ByteDance's Douyin are competing alongside Alibaba for early engagement. When several apps offer discounts over overlapping periods, winning a customer's first purchase can help determine where later spending goes.

The opening developed through several stages:

• September: Apple introduced the iPhone 17 series and Xiaomi launched the Xiaomi 17 series, bringing fresh flagship phones into the shopping season.
• First half of October: Major platforms began promotions for what has become nearly four weeks of rolling deals.
• Presale opening: In the first hour, 35 brands exceeded 100 million yuan and 1,802 brands doubled their turnover.
• Monday at 8 pm: Alibaba opened direct sales, with 80 brands passing 100 million yuan in the first hour.
• First two hours of direct sales: iPhone sales through Apple's official Tmall store exceeded the full day total for the same period last year.

Presales and direct sales mark different stages of the campaign. Both drew a rapid response, giving Alibaba an active base of shoppers before the main opening rush.

The longer calendar also changes comparisons with earlier festivals. More days of promotions create more opportunities to record sales. Independent estimates suggest the wider event across platforms grew strongly last year, helped by a longer schedule and fiercer price competition, although comparisons become harder as the shopping window stretches.

New phones and beauty bundles lead demand

Apple's iPhone 17 and Xiaomi's 17 series helped increase traffic and conversions after their September launches. Conversion means a shopper moves from browsing to buying. For customers who had waited for holiday pricing before upgrading, the festival brought new devices and discounts together.

Apple's two hour iPhone result on its official Tmall store was accompanied by strong accessory sales. AirPods 4 and Apple Watch S11 each cleared 10 million yuan in the first hour, alongside Xiaomi 17 Pro Max and Nintendo Switch. Phones and accessories remain central to purchases of expensive technology, while the Switch showed continuing demand for a familiar gaming device.

Premium skincare and makeup again moved quickly at the opening bell. Eight beauty brands surpassed 100 million yuan within ten minutes, reflecting the appeal of established labels, special sets and bundles suitable for gifts.

Last year, dozens of beauty brands also crossed the 100 million yuan threshold over the extended festival. Live streaming rooms supported those sales through recommendations and limited offers. This season's approach includes discounts on refills and boxed sets, exclusive early access and promotion by key opinion leaders, the personalities whose recommendations can influence purchases.

Limited time discounts and bundles with limited stock encourage shoppers to act early. For beauty merchants, brand loyalty and promotional timing work together. For electronics sellers, new product launches give customers another reason to buy when festival pricing becomes available.

Qwen changes how shoppers find products

Alibaba says Qwen, the family of large language models developed by Alibaba Cloud, is now embedded in the core of Taobao and Tmall. These AI systems can interpret language and help match a customer's request with relevant products, including searches that contain several preferences at once.

The platforms handle hundreds of millions of product queries each day. Alibaba reports a 20 percent improvement in the relevance of complex searches, a 12 percent increase in the return on merchants' advertising spending and a 10 percent rise in click through rates for certain recommendation scenarios.

Search relevance describes how closely results match what a customer wants. Advertising return measures the results merchants receive from money spent on ads. A click through rate measures how often people click a recommendation after seeing it. Better matching can help shoppers find suitable items and help merchants turn attention into purchases.

Zhang Kaifu, an Alibaba vice president who heads applications for the company's e-commerce businesses, said the investment is intended to affect sales directly.

"We are spending more resources on search and recommendation, which will have a direct impact on gross merchandise value. The return on our AI investment in e-commerce is worth the cost," Zhang said.

Gross merchandise value, or GMV, is the value of goods sold through a platform. At the scale of Singles Day, small improvements in discovery and recommendations can move billions of yuan in merchandise value during peak periods.

Customers can also use a personal shopping assistant to compare products and assemble lists. Snap and Shop lets a shopper upload a photograph and receive suggestions ranked by price and quality, making the image itself a starting point for finding an item.

Several features underwent public tests in recent months and attracted tens of millions of active users. Singles Day gives Alibaba its first full deployment of these tools across its flagship platforms, bringing them into a period when many customers are searching and buying at once.

Coupons and simpler prices target cautious buyers

Taobao and Tmall are issuing 50 billion yuan in coupons to members of 88VIP, the loyalty program aimed at customers who spend more. Selected products also carry direct discounts of 15 percent for all shoppers.

The platforms have reduced complicated rules for combining offers and moved toward straightforward price cuts. Simpler prices make checkout easier and reduce confusion for people buying through the festival for the first time. The extended window gives shoppers more time to decide which purchases belong in a larger basket.

Liu Bo, president of Tmall, described Double Eleven as an essential event for brands and connected the company's AI spending to both merchant operations and the customer experience.

"Double Eleven presents the most significant opportunity for brands throughout the year, and its role in driving business growth is irreplaceable and increasingly vital. We are betting on AI to help merchants improve product quality and operations, and to give consumers a better experience," Liu said.

Platforms and merchants are adding coupon pools to encourage purchases. Those subsidies can make deals more attractive, but threshold discounts also influence ordering behavior. A shopper may add extra items to reach the spending level needed for a coupon, then cancel unwanted items after placing the order.

Partial cancellations and generous return policies can reduce merchant margins even as headline order values rise. The money attached to an initial order and the money left after cancellations, returns and costs are different measures of the festival's commercial results.

Households balance upgrades with the need to save

China's prolonged property downturn and uneven consumer confidence form the backdrop to the opening surge. Households remain cautious about large commitments, making value a stronger influence on purchases. Platforms focused on discounts have gained share, while the largest operators have adopted deeper coupons and simpler prices to keep shoppers buying.

Yaling Jiang, founder of the consultancy ApertureChina, said price sensitivity has spread across income groups and is shaping what customers are willing to spend.

"We are at the peak of a consumption downgrade. People are so deep in a discount mindset and they feel the need to save every yuan they can," Jiang said.

A consumption downgrade describes buyers choosing cheaper options or focusing more closely on savings. In this festival, that pressure sits alongside strong demand for selected premium products, especially when discounts make them more accessible.

A national trade in subsidy program valued at 150 billion yuan is encouraging households to replace durable goods, particularly with appliances that use energy efficiently. A trade in combines replacing an older product with financial support toward a new one. Customers are seeking those rebates alongside Singles Day discounts.

Last year, that policy backdrop helped purchases of more expensive goods. Air conditioners, robot vacuums and smart toilets ranked among the fastest growing categories on major platforms. The current festival is drawing on the same incentive to upgrade household equipment.

Collectible toys and hobby goods are also growing, supported by communities built around anime, comics and gaming. Customers looking for small comforts and affordable enjoyment are creating demand beyond appliances and phones. Merchants are expanding their ranges in these categories and using live streams to reach fans directly.

Delivery, returns and packaging add to the workload

Delivery networks must handle elevated order volumes across weeks, even after months of planning. Companies add temporary staff and extend shifts to meet promised delivery times. The longer festival spreads the work across a wider period while keeping pressure on warehouses and transport operations.

Packaging is another consequence of the order surge. Cardboard boxes, plastic wrapping and protective materials accumulate in warehouses and neighborhoods, increasing calls each November for greener materials and better recycling programs.

Returns create a second flow of goods through the same network. Generous policies can encourage customers to buy, but high return rates compress margins for merchants and platforms. Threshold coupons can also lead shoppers to order more than they intend to keep, then cancel some items minutes later.

Platforms are responding with clearer offer rules, better size guides and image searches that help customers find products more precisely. Automatic restocking systems are intended to move returned goods back into inventory more quickly. Alibaba's logistics arm has continued expanding capacity to reduce bottlenecks in both deliveries to customers and goods coming back.

Nearby stores join the festival as Alibaba looks overseas

Taobao Instant Commerce is entering the campaign at scale, connecting 37,000 brands and 400,000 offline stores. The service links online ordering with inventory in nearby supermarkets, pharmacies and specialty shops.

Many purchases can reach customers in under an hour in large cities. For a neighborhood shop, the connection creates a way to sell existing stock to customers ordering online. For shoppers, cosmetics, snacks and daily necessities can become part of a festival basket without the wait associated with a conventional parcel delivery.

That blend of online and offline shopping can keep customers on the platform after the first rush of purchases. It also responds to rivals with strong quick commerce operations that compete for small orders once made at hypermarkets or convenience stores.

Alibaba says the 2025 promotion will extend to 20 international markets, taking the Singles Day brand beyond China. Details of that expansion remain limited. The plan fits the company's effort to grow international commerce as a second engine of its business.

Alibaba has been expanding its international commerce and logistics footprint, and overseas revenue has risen as a share of the company total. A broader festival presence could build brand awareness and create another shopping wave shaped around local calendars.

The overseas effort depends on logistics, local partnerships and how well AI tools match products with customers across languages and shopping cultures. Those practical requirements connect the international plan to the same search, recommendation and delivery work supporting the festival in China.

Investors watch efficiency as headline totals recede

Leading platforms stopped publishing a single Singles Day GMV figure in 2022. Shopper counts, category growth and the number of brands reaching sales milestones now carry more weight in descriptions of the event.

Alibaba's leaders argue that AI improvements are already paying off. Better search relevance, stronger advertising returns and more effective recommendations can help the platform locate demand and earn more from its traffic. The aim is to improve sales and the economics of each transaction without relying entirely on ever deeper promotions.

Competition continues to shape that calculation. Rivals built around low prices are adding subsidy pools, while creators on short video apps are making live commerce a daily habit for younger users. Those pressures affect pricing across the market, even during a festival designed to concentrate attention.

Investors and brands will therefore watch active buyers, repeat purchases, delivery speed and return ratios alongside category results. The fast opening on Taobao and Tmall gives merchants an early sales boost. Discounts, advertising performance and the cost of fulfilling and reversing orders will shape how much of that activity translates into earnings.

At a Glance

• Direct sales opened at 8 pm on Monday, with 80 brands exceeding 100 million yuan in the first hour and more than 30,000 brands doubling sales from a year earlier.
• Eight beauty brands passed 100 million yuan within ten minutes; iPhone sales on Apple's official Tmall store in two hours exceeded the full day total for the same period last year.
• AirPods 4, Apple Watch S11, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max and Nintendo Switch each generated more than 10 million yuan in the first hour.
• Alibaba reports improvements of 20 percent in complex search relevance, 12 percent in advertising returns and 10 percent in click through rates for certain recommendations.
• Taobao and Tmall are issuing 50 billion yuan in 88VIP coupons and offering direct discounts of 15 percent on selected products.
• The festival lasts nearly four weeks, with discounts and a national trade in program supporting demand while returns and delivery costs affect margins.
• Taobao Instant Commerce connects 37,000 brands and 400,000 stores; Alibaba plans to extend the promotion to 20 international markets.
• Leading platforms have stopped publishing a single festival GMV total, putting greater attention on buyers, category growth, brand milestones and operating performance.