Mutual Attraction
The world’s biggest annual shopping event is going offline and becoming global.
In China in 1993, Singles Day began as an excuse for single men to treat themselves with something nice as a distraction from the fact that they didn’t have a partner. Now, every year, the world’s biggest annual spending spree erupts on 11/11 (the “1”s in the date resemble lonely individuals). It has become an annual e-commerce splurge where sales dwarf those of Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, times two.
While the spending frenzy has historically happened online, there has been more prevalent impact on physical retail in recent years. In 2017, Tmall, Alibaba’s premium marketplace, opened 60 physical pop-ups across 12 cities in China, powered by Alibaba’s retail technologies like AR and mobile payments. In 2018, Alibaba’s technologies enabled over 200,000 brick-and-mortar stores in more than 100 business districts in China to participate in Singles day, showing a blueprint for how the e-tailer giant can help businesses integrate everything from inventory to store management to logistics to payments, both online and offline.
Singles Day has also become an opportunity for global brands to reach out to the Chinese diaspora overseas. Michael Kors, Coach, Lancôme, YSL Beauty, Alexander McQueen, Estee Lauder, Neiman Marcus, and Farfetch are just a few of the names that offered Singles Day deals this year aimed specifically at Chinese consumers living in North America.
Sources: L2 Gartner Daily Insights (November 9, 2018) | Xinhua (November 11, 2018) | Forbes (November 13, 2018) | Image: Alibaba