As spring approaches with mild weather in Shanghai, online and offline shopping sales are increasing after the restrictions imposed by coronavirus prevention and control measures.

"We didn’t expect that small household appliances would become bestsellers,” said a staff member at a Suning store in Changning district's Zhongshan Park. “It must be because people are cooking more at home during the epidemic."

Statistically, the most remarkable increase in sales in February was for electric-warmup lunch boxes, with sales 20 times those in January. The sales of airfryers increased six times.

“The popularity of electric-warmup lunch boxes is related to the full return to work of companies in Shanghai in February. Many customers buy them to take their meals to work," said the staff member.

Chen Liang, who owns a sports equipment store on an e-commerce platform, told reporters: "Recently, everyone has been 'bored' at home, and many products have become hot sellers.” Chen said that since the COVID-19 outbreak, his store has had two best-selling products, yoga mats and table tennis training devices.

Roughly 10,000 yoga mats have been sold in Shenyang in the past two months, and sometimes they have been out of stock. Sales of table tennis trainer devices last week reached more than 200 sets, but a month ago only a few dozen sets were sold.

Digital products are also part of the trend that has seen sales rebound after a “quiet” period over the past few months.

In previous years, March and April see increased demand for photographic and other digital products, and 2019 is no exception.

According to data provided by Suning, in March, sales of 5G mobile phones on all online and offline platforms have increased by 168 percent compared with the same period in February, ushering in the first peak of 5G consumption since the beginning of the year.

A staff member from Chinese smartphone maker Oppo said that new products are often best-sellers. Recently, in order to promote consumption, interest-free payment has been introduced, which translates to a monthly expenditure of about a few hundred yuan, so market acceptance has been relatively high.

As spring approaches with mild weather in Shanghai, consumers are eager to go shopping for new products. [Photo/WeChat account: scofcom]