Beauty livestreamer Austin Li Jiaqi attends Louis Vuitton S/S21 Men's Collection event at Shanghai Tank Art Park on August 6, 2020 in Shanghai, China. (LINTAO ZHANG/GETTY IMAGES / BLOOMBERG)

China’s Li Jiaqi, a top livestream salesman widely known as the “lipstick brother,” sold $1.9 billion in goods on the first day of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s annual shopping festival, as the country’s consumers splash out despite slower economic growth in third quarter.

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Li, who earned his nickname by trying on various makeup products on his show, pre-sold 12 billion yuan in products ranging from Shiseido Co lotions to Apple AirPods, according to preliminary data compiled by e-commerce data specialist Taosj.com.

Chinese  livestreamer Li Jiaqi's sales are a record for any show livestreamed on Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace, according to Taosj.com data

Li’s sales are a record for any show livestreamed on Alibaba’s Taobao online marketplace, according to Taosj.com data. 

Livestreaming is part variety show, part infomercial, part group chat — a format pioneered in China that’s grown more popular since the pandemic started. Li’s show Wednesday lasted a marathon 12 hours — the first day of China’s more than three-week “Singles’ Day” shopping binge — and attracted nearly 250 million views, Taobao showed.

“Normally we have about 20 million views a show daily, but we got 250 million today, all the girls, where are you emerging from?” Li said in a Weibo post.

Although the final sales from the pre-sale show are likely to be lower as some shoppers cancel items ordered during the early session, the number demonstrates the growing strength of China’s innovative e-commerce sphere in the face of hurdles including ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

Viya, another top livestreamer, sold about 8 billion yuan worth of goods on the same day, in a show that lasted 14 hours, while another star, Cherie, had sales of about 1.2 billion yuan, according to Taosj.com.

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An Alibaba spokesperson declined to comment on the sales data, and neither the company — or the livestreamers themselves — release such information. 

“The consumption enthusiasm is very rampant,” said Jason Yu, managing director of research firm Kantar Worldpanel Greater China. “Top-tier livestreamers are getting more and more concentration in the market.”

Alibaba debuted Singles’ Day — which began as a shopping festival celebrating men and women who aren’t in relationships — in 2009. It has since been expanded to grow into a nationwide marathon of frantic bargain-hunting dwarfing US sales events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.