By Dhirendra Tripathi

Investing.com – Alibaba (NYSE:) stock (HK:) closed 0.5% lower in Hong Kong trading Friday while smaller rival JD.com (NASDAQ:) ended the session 5.2% higher, responding to their respective performance with their annual Single’s Day online sales fest.

Alibaba saw its first event as a one-day affair in 2009. In 2009, the company’s sales increased at their lowest rate of growth. China’s largest ecommerce platform, which converted the event into an 11-day affair last year, said gross merchandise volume grew 8.5% to 540.3 billion yuan ($84.5 billion), the first time in history that growth has slowed below 10%.

GMV, which is the most widely used barometer for determining the health and size of an ecommerce website, signifies the total amount of services and products sold.

The event also provides the likes of Apple (NASDAQ:) and L’Oreal (PA:) with a ready outlet to push their sales.

JD.com saw a 29% increase in sales, with 349.1 million yuan of transactions. This is an improvement from last year. This was also due to the fact that JD.com gave more time to customers on their opening day and didn’t make them work late.

Due to the intense scrutiny that Alibaba has received from Chinese Internet and antitrust authorities, it was feeling under pressure. Therefore, the company slowed down in promoting this event. Some of the reasons for the slow sales were costlier products and consumer fatigue. The fest also lost its appeal.

Alibaba was able to attract a record number of brands to its platform and over 900 million users during the festival. According to Alibaba, 78 companies saw their GMV increase more than 10x compared to last year and reach more than 100,000,000 yuan.