China's Single Day - bigger than Black Friday and expected to smash $20bn
Singles Day, the biggest online shopping day in history
Ashley Armstrong, retail editor
10 NOVEMBER 2017 • 1:21PM
China is in gearing up for Single's Day, the world's biggest shopping event, as $20bn (£15bn) is forecast to be splurged in just 24 hours as companies across the world try to cash in on the spending spree.
Single's Day started as an obscure "anti-Valentine's" celebration for single people in China back in the 1990s, but it has spawned into the world's biggest online shopping day after Jack Ma, the billionaire owner of shopping giant Alibaba spotted an opportunity.
In China November 11 is known as "bare sticks holiday" because of how it looks numerically (11.11) and has become a way for people to celebrate their singledom. Its estimated that by 2020 there will be 35m more men under the age of 30 in China than women, partly due to the country's long standing one-child policy which favoured sons.
Alibaba began launching "Double 11" deals in 2009 just as online shopping was starting to explode and trademarked the term "Singles Day" by 2012.
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Since then it has become a huge global event, complete with a Super Bowl-type gala with celebrity guests such as David and Victoria Beckham . This year Alibaba has called on British popstar Jessie J and Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman to provide glamour and the Blue Man Group performers for entertainment at the Shanghai-based event.
Meanwhile Jack Ma is using the shopping festival to debut a film career, appearing as a Tai Chi master in a short film, "Gong Shou Dou".
Jack Ma's movie poster which allows users to superimpose their own faces alongside the billionaire
Last year Chinese shoppers spent $17.8bn in 24 hours, with $1bn splashed in the first hour as consumers rushed to pick up bargains. This resulted in 467 million parcels being delivered after 710 million payments were made, according to Chinese news agency Xinhua.
"The China Express Association predicts that the industry will handle more than 1 billion packages this year," commented James Hebbert, UK managing director of Hylink. "This is despite a slowdown in China’s economic growth and more cautious consumer spending."
The Singles Day splurge dwarfs other retail spending and it was triple the $5.9bn spent by US shoppers across Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Thanksgiving last year. The 24-hour shopping event is also 18 times the size of Amazon's Prime Day.
Alibaba's Singles Day event last year came complete with a dance routine
"By 2020, China’s e-commerce market is set to be larger than those of the US, Japan, Germany, the UK and France combined," commented Nick Landon, managing director of Royal Mail Parcels.
This year Alibaba is playing into Chinese consumer's growing taste of alcohol by publicising an exclusive deal that allows customers to buy a lifetime supply of a liquor for just 11,111 yuan (£1,269).
Around 60,000 international brands are expected to take part in this year's Single's Day. Upmarket British grocer Waitrose is expecting sales of its goods including English wine and biscuits and tea, which are available on Alibaba's TMall, to quadruple this year.
“It's difficult to ignore the importance of the Chinese market, particularly ecommerce, as demand for high quality, British products continues to grow rapidly, said Waitrose business manager Daniel Armstrong. "Our sales in China are already up almost 75 per cent on last year and we expect Singles Day to provide another huge boost this weekend.”
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