The Shanghai Digital Life Festival, an important part of this year's Shanghai Double Five Shopping Festival, opened in the city in East China on Aug 28 and will run to Sept 12 – aiming to promote its e-commerce platforms, online retail brands and livestream shopping.

At the launch ceremony, the first Shanghai online retail brands top 50 list was released. The average annual sales growth rate of the brands on the list is 276 percent, with 22 percent of the brands growing by more than 5 times a year.

More than ever, the prosperous development of the brands is said to depend on e-commerce platforms. Many of them are now selling through Tmall, JD and Xiaohongshu. These platforms provide one-stop services for the brands.

According to statistics from key e-commerce enterprises in Shanghai, in the first half of this year the city's online shopping revenue hit 388.9 billion yuan ($56.35 billion), up 5.9 percent year-on-year.