(Yicai Global) June 19 -- Food and beverages, mother and child, and beauty products were the best sellers during China’s June 18 online shopping festival, according to data from major e-commerce operators JD.Com, Alibaba Group Holding and Suning.Com.

Fresh food, healthcare and kitchenware were the fastest growing sectors by sales, data from JD.Com shows, with the highest average prices per item sold going to mobile phones, household appliances and computer products.

JD.Com started the June 18 e-commerce festival, or 618, in 2009 to stir up sales. Several other platforms have since joined the event, now one of the country’s biggest sales days.

Orders on JD.Com totaled CNY269.2 billion (USD38 billion) from June 1 through yesterday, its figures show, up from CNY201.5 billion a year earlier. Some 187 brands racked up at least CNY100 million (USD14.1 million) in sales.

Tmall, run by JD.Com rival Alibaba, facilitated CNY698.2 billion worth of sales during the event, its best performance since the Covid-19 outbreak, Alibaba said this morning.

Suning’s online and offline sales more than doubled from a day earlier yesterday, with orders for large fast-moving consumer goods tripling and delivery-to-doorstep orders up six-fold, it said today. Sales at cloud-based retail stores grew five-fold.

The event was also an opportunity for celebrities to endorse products through livestreams, with Alibaba’s Taobao inviting 300 celebrities to host broadcasts from June 1 through June 2018. More than 100 presented livestreams on JD.Com from May 29 through yesterday and JD.Com’s livestreams held in tandem with video app Kuaishou facilitated CNY1.42 billion worth of sales in a single day. Some brands sold more in a single livestream than they did in the first half of this year.