Lipsticks & air cleaners among top purchases for Spring Festival

Related story: Agriculture products, imported goods bestsellers for Lunar New Year

Travel and smart gears are recording fast year-on-year growth as consumers prepare for Spring Festival, the most important festival and holiday of the year, revealing a transformation of their lifestyles, according to a report released Monday.

Lipsticks, a new favorite of Chinese for Spring Festival, witnessed 115.96 percent surge in sales this year, beating the year-on-year growth rate of 91.97 percent of last year, after reporting jump in sales for three years in a row. An overwhelming 56 percent of the buyers were born in the 1990s, followed by 30 percent born in the 1980s, and the top three provinces making the purchases are Guangdong, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, said the report jointly issued by Aliyun, DTCJ and CBNData.

Chinese men also have started paying more attention to their appearance, especially those from Henan province, who top the male buyers for makeup.

Given the smog the country witnessed recently, it comes as no surprise that the sales of air cleaners exploded this year with a year-on-year growth of 256 percent with Beijing seeing the most purchases, four times that of Sichuan, the second on the list.

Smart gears, such as smart watch, smart camera, smart wristband and even VR helmet and VR glasses, are making their way into rural families as their sales increased by 30 percent in rural areas.

Imported goods also saw better-than-average sales with a year-on-year growth of 38 percent. Given that the popular ones are facial masks from South Korea, snacks from Japan, baby and maternal products from Europe, most of the buyers are apparently female. However, buyers of different parts of the nation reveal different preferences with Guangdong and Shandong buying more watches, Zhejiang and Jiangsu more baby and maternal products, and Shanghai more snacks.

Agriculture products from rural China are also among the bestsellers. Since December, more than 200 types of local specialties from farmlands and pastures are available via Alibaba's online shopping sites. They have attracted buyers from 365 cities in the country, and extended beyond borders to reach consumers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Top items include pine nuts from China's northern border Greater Hinggan Mountains area，pecans from East China's Zhejiang province, as well as rose-puffed pastries from south China's Yunnan province. One week's promotion online for some nuts and dried apricots has outstripped six months' worth of sales offline, the company said.

Chinese pets also managed to share in the blessings of the most important Chinese festival given that dog food and cat food business has seen 41.3 percent growth on average for three years in a row.