If Cyber Monday and Black Thursday are among your favorite days of the year, and you crave for more buying-at-a-discount action, then Single’s Day is for you!
Scheduled for November 11 every year, it is the Chinese version of Cyber Monday, only bigger, much bigger.
With the help of Alibaba, the Chinese version of Amazon, only bigger, much bigger, Single’s Day has become huge. It is by far the planet’s busiest shopping day, giving consumers giant discounts on items as varied as cars and clothes, for 24 hours.
Alibaba is not the only outlet taking part. There are hundreds of other companies that do not want to be left out of the cyber-spending orgy, and offer many products at bargain basement prices as well.
So why is the American consumer so in-the-dark about Single’s Day? (By the way, Single’s Day began in the 1990s and originally had nothing to do with shopping.) Some say they are afraid to add another crazy shopping day to the already crowded fall shopping schedule which begins with Black Thursday.
“All retailers are laser-focused on ramping up for the period from Black Friday to Christmas,” says Danny Silverman, head of product strategy at ecommerce analytics firm Clavis Insight. “To participate in Singles’ Day would sap sales from that critical period.”
In the US November 11 is also Veteran’s Day and is already associated to a certain extent with promotions attached to that holiday.
Some US stores do participate in Single’s Day, such as Walmart, Macy’s, Gap, Target and Costco, but only for their overseas consumers, mostly through Alibaba’s shopping websites Tmall and Taobao. Costco was the top seller on TMall Global on Singles Day in 2015, selling about $3.14 million worth of merchandise in just one hour.
Sales last year on Alibaba amounted to $14.3 billion, and this Single’s Day there is an expectation that $20 billion worth of products will be sold on just that one day. Compare that with what Americans spent on Cyber Monday and Black Thursday combined last year: $5.8 billion online.
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