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When Alibaba founder Jack Ma launched China’s answer to Cyber Monday on 11 November 2009, pedalling 24-hour discounts on everything from electronics to sportswear, it generated $7.8 million for the 27 online retailers that participated. Though perfectly respectable, the inaugural Singles Day was a blip compared to the $887 million US e-tailers generated during Cyber Monday that year. Eight years later, in 2017, Alibaba alone banked a record $25.3 billion on the day — more than Cyber Monday ($6.6 billion), Black Friday ($5 billion) and Amazon Prime Day ($4.2 billion) combined. Here, a look at what’s in store for the biggest shopping day in the world.
Alibaba is confident this year’s Singles Day will break all previous records in terms of scale and reach. The company is making a push to attract more international brands and customers, investing in a new logistics hub at Belgium Liège Airport which is expected to make 72-hour delivery a reality for Europeans. Alibaba-owned AliExpress is predicted to double its sales in the UK alone. For the first time, Alibaba’s South East Asian arm Lazada will launch promotions across Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
This year’s results will be under particular scrutiny amid mounting evidence of a Chinese spending slowdown and a 9 per cent drop in the value of the renminbi. Alibaba’s announcement last week that it is cutting its revenue forecast for the fiscal year from 10 to 6 per cent stirred concern among investors, who were also grappling with the company’s lower-than-expected revenue for the quarter.
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Singles Day is big business for fast fashion brands like Uniqlo, Vero Moda and Only. Alibaba, which has faced resistance from luxury fashion houses because of the presence of counterfeiters on Tmall and elsewhere, has slowly been making inroads in the category. In October it announced a joint venture with Richemont that will bring Net-a-Porter and Mr Porter to Tmall Luxury Pavilion, the invite-only marketplace dedicated to high-end brands that Alibaba launched last year.
While the discount focus of Singles Day makes it an unattractive proposition for most luxury players, some brands are using the opportunity to create full-price, limited-edition collections for Alibaba’s highest spenders. Last year Tmall Luxury Pavilion launched Double 11 Musée, a pop-up that featured Singles Day capsule collections from labels including Burberry, Rimowa and La Perla. Luxury brands also participated in Tmall Collection, a live-streamed fashion show that gave viewers the opportunity to buy items instantly from brands like Stella McCartney, Giuseppe Zanotti and Jason Wu. Watch for more to come.
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