MANILA - Lazada on Friday said it broke its own records in terms of the number of buyers and sellers during its 11.11 sale last Wednesday.

The online shopping platform said it has yet to tally the numbers, but early estimates point to at least double the amount of sales and orders from the previous year.

“Safe to say, we have never seen this amount of sales and amount of buyers and amount of sellers ever in a single day in the whole Philippines,” said Petrus Carbonell, head of business development at Lazada Philippines.

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Carbonell said Lazada has been riding a boom in online shopping as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift in the shopping preferences of Filipinos.

“The pandemic accelerated the existing trends already,” he said.

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Sales have increased 2.5 times since the start of the pandemic, with purchases of essential goods such as groceries rising 15 times their pre-COVID levels, he said.

Filipino attitudes towards online shopping are also changing, Carbonell said, with many bow seeing Lazada as “a lifestyle destination” and are discovering products through the platform.

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