Singles’ Day, also unofficially called a shopping day, is fast approaching. Don’t lose your chance to buy something cool at an unbelievable price
Singles’ Day in China 2020: what to expect? Source: shutterstock.com
We’ve got great news for shoppers from all around the world. November 11 is a special day for the Chinese, and it seems like this tradition has been adopted by the rest of the world during the last 10 years. Particularly, a large number of online and offline stores have unbelievable discounts to promote the holiday and play a tremendous role in making Singles’ Day popular worldwide. The date 11.11 is a carnival of discounts and a shopper’s paradise, and not just in the most populous country in the world. Moreover, this holiday is now on the same level as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Singles’ Day in China: the history of the holiday
The holiday originates from Nanjing, China, and it is believed that Nanjing University students are the creators of China Singles’ Day. They had some celebrations during the 1990s, and several other educational institutions from Nanjing adopted this tradition. There’s a legend about four male students, who had a party in 1993 (apparently, 11.11), and talked about further plans. Thus, one of the major points was to find a partner, but it is not an excuse for not having a party and celebrate the fact that they are single. So, they agreed that November 11 will be the day when celebrations in honor of being single are held.
Chinese believe in the magic of numbers, astrology, numerology, etc, so there is no way for such a holiday to be celebrated on a random day. 11 November is 11.11 (in numbers), so four “ones” represent four singles.
On the one hand, it is customary to cheerfully and vividly celebrate one’s bachelor life on this day in China. On the other hand, this day is considered to be favorable for establishing new relationships and meeting someone special.
Singles’ Day statistics
Now let’s consider what actually makes this holiday really popular. It all started in 2009 when the Alibaba Group online platform from the Celestial Empire (or Tianxia) carried out a marketing campaign called “World Shopping Day”. They decided to have a sale (in particular, AliExpress.com) with great discounts (up to 50-60%). Discounts are the norm. This “holiday” has been timed to coincide with Singles’ Day, which is also celebrated in China on November 11th.
The organizers of the big sale have planned that this will become an annual event, and a significant discount is offered to the user (the size of which can be determined as “impossible to refuse”), which will turn them into buyers. And they have not been mistaken. Other large Chinese Internet sites will join this initiative very soon.
Thus, the holiday has become popular thanks to big sales in Chinese stores. Singles’ Day sales tend to show impressive growth each year. So, in 2015, within the Alibaba Group, the value of sales reached the $14.3B mark, in 2016 it reached $17.8B, in 2017, it was no less than $25.3B, in 2018 in was $30B, and finally, in 2019 Alibaba made more than $38B in sales in 24 hours. Finally, the total sales during this shopping festival in 2020 reached $78 billion. This has made Chinese Singles’ Day the largest online shopping event in the world.
You can buy different goods on the websites of online stores, and the range of available goods is very extensive. You can choose anything for yourself or your relatives/friends: from cheap trinkets to expensive jewelry, as well as from casual wear to stylish outfits. Traditionally, shoppers are interested in gadgets, electronics, and household appliances.
Chinese Singles’ Day 2021: the best sites to purchase the most popular goods
Many Chinese sites (for example, AliExpress, Tom Top, Tinydeal, or Bang Good) offer a huge selection of cheap goods from a wide variety of categories: clothes, shoes, mobile phones, home and garden appliances, laptops, etc. On the other hand, many Chinese sites offer a lot of interesting specialized items from certain industries. Very often, buyers are looking for these very specialized products in such stores. For instance, GearBest and Geekbuying have very interesting and rare low-cost special equipment, drones, and even 3D printers. Such sites as Strawberrynet, Banggood, Zaful, RCmoment, Rosegal, Soufeel, and DX.com are also worth mentioning.
Popular trends for 2021
- It is the first Singles’ Day without Alibaba’s founder Jack Ma. However, it is too early to write off Alibaba and particularly AliExpress. Jack Ma has lead Alibaba to world leadership, so this company shows an enormous sales rate every year. And this year can’t be the exception. Thus, we believe Alibaba will prepare something special this year.
- We all know that the US-China trade war is still kind of an ongoing process. Nevertheless, statistics show that U.S. products are still very popular in China, and some of them tend to win in the Chinese market. Thus, we believe several leading U.S. brands can beat records on the Chinese market this year during the Singles’ Day sales.
- JD.com is keeping up the pace. We think that the site will intensify its activity and work out something interesting.
Thus, stay tuned and have the very best shopping on 11.11.
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