In the North American world, we honor the service of men and women who have fought bravely for our freedom with Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day (in Canada).
In China, this day is an enormous commercial holiday called Single’s Day. The date was chosen as the ‘ones’ symbolizes single people. This day is like Cyber Monday and Prime Day plus Black Friday combined. It’s the most anticipated online shopping day in China.
Singles Day originated on 11.11.11 – the most ones that can be used in written calendar format in Nanjing University in China. A group of single students discussed how they could break away from the monotony of being single and created activities and events on this day which spread to other communities and universities. It has even been said that over 4000 couples were married on this date in Beijing on 11.11.11 to celebrate ‘pairing up’.
In China – Amazon is not the most popular e-commerce platform there. Their online giants are Alibaba who reported $40B in sales in 2019 from 11.11. There’s also JD.com, Tmall, Taobao and Lazada. They often compete with price promotions and loyalty and also have reputations for what they are best at selling. Taobao is where you would go for cheap and cheerful fringe items and if you are looking for a large volume of a certain item, Alibaba is a good platform to start with.
With the pandemic behind China since May, and lock down restrictions lifted, there was anticipation that this year’s Single Day shopping holidays were going to be a bit muted.
However, the numbers are in for 2020 and Alibaba’s sales are approximately more than $70B USD blowing forecasts out of the water and showing that the pandemic has not affected sales for this holiday.
