Everything you need to know about Singles' Day

Singles’ Day is a day for chinese people to celebrate and socialize their pride on being single. It was started in 1993 in Nanjing by a group of bachelors. It is celebrated on November 11, for the numerical date “11/11” as it shows four “singles”. In 2009, Alibaba (Asia’s largest online ecommerce tech company) turned it into an online shopping event by offering massive discounts on its online marketplace, Tmall, for only 24 hours. The event has now become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world with sales of over US$25.4 billion in 2017.

In Asia, November 11, 11.11 or Double 11 has not only become the biggest e-commerce day in Asia (and in the world), but also a nationwide shopping festival. A pre-sale extravaganza titled “11.11 Countdown Gala” is hosted by Alibaba with entertainment and marketing activities to initiate the online event and bring awareness to the discounts. The agenda includes surprise guests, appearances by Chinese celebrities, music, fashion shows, and a LIVE countdown of the 24-hour sales event. The event’s entertainment successfully engages viewers and encourages them to shop more and take advantage of the discounts.

According to Alibaba, Singles’ Day buyers came from 225 countries and regions with 812 million orders being processed (with the first arriving 12 minutes and 18 seconds after midnight). Shoppers buy from trendy to day-to day products such as: electronics, home appliances, clothes, food (JD sold over 500,000 Thailand black tiger shrimp), cosmetics and skincare (JD reported they sold 55,000 facial masks). JD also sold 500 million yuan in air conditioners over a 30-minute period, and 100 million yuan in televisions over a one-minute period.

(Source: Alibaba Group)

Alibaba reported that customers on its retail sites spent $2 billion in the first hour of Singles’ Day last year. According to CNBC, in 2017, 90% of their sales came in from mobile devices. Alibaba’s famous rival, JD.com, also generated $19 billion in sales during the e-commerce holiday, although they start discounts on November 1st to reduce the shipping traffic and give consumers more time to buy.

(Source: Alibaba Group)

Alibaba’s “Singles’ Day” sales hit a record of $25 billion dollars in 24 hours. Its mobile wallet app Alipay processed 256,000 payment transactions per second, setting a world record. In the entire 24 hours of the event, a total of 1.48 billion transactions were processed by Alipay. This event is three times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined.

• Bosses give employees time to shop during the festival (some of them allow their employees to get out an hour early so they can get home to shop).
• Last year the public relations team of Tmall marketplace reported that during the first hour of sales, the 2 million pieces of underwear sold would span 1,864 miles if laid end to end, and the 1.6 million bras sold would stack up to three times the height of Mount Everest

ACTTAO offers cross-border Asia WeChat eCommerce platforms, marketing & promotions, sales agent distribution networks, logistics, and customer support services to US and European merchants or brands. Brands can leverage our platform to participate in Singles’ Day sales. We are WeChat Certified, AliPay Certified & Sell2Asia Approved.

If you want to see a demo of our WeChat ecommerce platform, Click here

There’s no doubt Singles' Day it’s a huge phenomenon in the e-commerce industry. It started as a singles holiday, on November 11, for Chinese people to proudly celebrate their singledom and was then turned into a massive shopping event by the e-commerce conglomerate, Alibaba.

Although Alibaba was the pioneer in converging this holiday with a massive e-commerce festival, many other online retailers participate actively to promote their products and increase their sales, regardless of their presence on Alibaba’s platform.

The Singles’ Day shopping festival offers massive revenue potential for companies outside of Asia who want to sell their products in this market. Using one of Asia’s cross-border e-commerce platforms, overseas companies can partake in the Chinese holiday by offering discounts on its products there.