By Casey Hall and Albee Zhang
BEIJING (Reuters) -Alibaba’s online shopping platforms Taobao and Tmall cancelled its annual Dec. 12 shopping festival and will instead host another shopping festival called ‘year-end good price’ in December, according to notices on the platforms’ websites on Friday.
The dates of the new festival were not included in the notice, which was posted in a help section for platform merchants, and Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the change.
The 12.12 shopping festival, held annually on Dec. 12 since 2012, was the less-celebrated sister of November’s Singles Day sales festival, which traditionally fell on Nov. 11 but has in recent years ballooned into a multi-week event beginning in late October.
(Reporting by Albee Zhang and Brenda Goh; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Edmund Klamann)