Originated at Nanjing University in 1993, Chinese Singles Day a popular holiday among young Chinese people that celebrates their pride in being single. The date, November 11th (11/11), was chosen because the number “1” resembles an individual who is alone.

Since 1993 the holiday has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world, with Alibaba shoppers exceeding 168.2 billion yuan (US$25.4 billion) in spending during the 2017 celebration. Rival JD.com hosts an eleven-day shopping festival as well, which garnered US$19.1 billion, bringing the Chinese total to US$44.5 billion.

During the day shoppers will be able to buy products with Huge discounts. The success of the Chinese shopping festival was so huge that many different countries started to promote this day also as a local shopping day and offering discounts for their users.

Chinese Single Day have Eclipsed Cyber Monday and Black Friday

It didn’t take long for Singles Day, which started in 2009 as a “quirky” anti-Valentine’s Day shopping event, to sprint past Black Friday and Cyber Monday in sales. And since 2012, the unthinkably large shopping extravaganza has served as a point of comparison, anxiety, and education for American retailers.

Smartphones Influence

The use of Mobile on the 11.11 shopping festival has played a key role and jumped from only 21% on 2012 to 90% in 2017. For example, For Cyber Monday, mobile shopping made up 64% of page views over the weekend this year, a 10% increase from 2016. In sales, mobile made up 43% of the order, which was also a year-on 10% increase.

5 Takeaways from Singles Day Event

• Singles Day boosts all retail in China.
• US products are in high demand by Chinese consumers for Singles Day
• Chinese shoppers value quality over discounts on Singles Day.
• Small and medium-sized enterprises played a key role in the success.
• Singles Day has gone global and has been an important part of Alibaba’s globalization strategy, and 60,000 international brands sold to a half billion Chinese consumers.