Taobao, Eachnet See Flowering Sales On Feb. 14

Sales volume on Alibaba's consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce site Taobao.com exceeded RMB45 million on both February 13 and 14, reports Beijing Times quoting Taobao and Alibaba online payment subsidiary AliPay statistics. Sales were driven by Valentine's veterans: flowers, chocolate and cosmetics, with 50,000 roses sold on Taobao on Valentine's Day. Cosmetics are among the top most traded items on Taobao.com in terms of 2007 sales volume. Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma has hopes to reach annual Taobao transaction volume of RMB100 billion this year. Taobao's transaction volume increased 156.3 percent year-on-year to reach RMB43.3 billion in 2007.

eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY) China subsidiary Eachnet also saw holiday gains with cosmetics sales increasing 30 percent and flower and candy sales up 20 percent on February 14, according to an Eachnet executive.