China’s online shopping bonanza broke records this year with top brands like Apple iPhones, L’Oreal’s Lancome skin toner and Nestle chocolates raced off the virtual shelves.

Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com racked up approximately $116 billion in sales across their platforms during the Singles Day shopping event, both setting new records, according to Reuters data.

Singles Day, also known as Double 11 because it happens on 11 November every year, is the world’s biggest online sales event, eclipsing Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US. However, because of disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic, this year’s event spanned 11 days rather than the typical one-off 24-hour bonanza.

New York and Hong Kong-listed Alibaba said its total gross merchandise value (GMV) over the 11-day period, a figure that shows the total value of orders across Alibaba’s shopping platforms, totalled approximately 498.2 billion yuan ($74.1 billion) Alibaba said, as lockdown-weary consumers splashed out on as many as 16 million discounted goods, nearly double last year’s 268.4 billion yuan.

Rival Chinese online sales platforms such as Hong Kong-quoted JD.com and Nasdaq-listed Pinduoduo also ran Singles Day events. JD.com’s transaction volume over the 11-day period totalled 271.5 billion yuan ($41 billion), more than the 204.4 billion yuan it recorded in 2019.

JD.com stock jumped more than 22% to $368 as investors absorbed the sales data, although Alibaba shares have been dragged lower in the wake of the pulled IPO of its former subsidiary and online finance business Ant.

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