No, it’s not Black Friday. It’s China’s Singles Day, which falls on Nov. 11 every year.
The online flash sale binge on China’s mammoth e-commerce giants, like Alibaba’s Tmall.com and its rival JD.com, begins at midnight Friday China local time and lasts for 24 hours.
For a few years now, Singles Day sales have far surpassed its U.S. counterparts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday -- combined.
Staff members of a cross-border e-commerce company package products in Ningbo, China, Nov. 8, 2017.
Last year, Americans spent a record $12.8 billion online between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday, according to analytics firm Adobe Digital Imprints. Impressive until you compare it to the $17.6 billion in sales generated by Chinese consumers in a single 24-hour period during 2016’s Singles Day.
This year, Citigroup told Bloomberg that Singles Day sales are expected to exceed $23 billion. That’s more than the gross domestic product of Iceland in 2016.
So what’s it all about?
Singles Day is China’s anti-Valentine’s Day -- known as “Bare Sticks Day” or “Bare Branches Day” in Chinese -- because the date "11/11" looks like bare branches and "one" is the loneliest number.
Legend has it Singles Day began in the early 1990s in the dorm rooms of Nanjing University, one of China’s oldest and most prestigious universities, when a group of single friends bemoaned the lack of significant others and decided to mark the day by organizing activities as a group of singles and soothing their loneliness by buying themselves a gift.
It was originally known as Bachelor’s Day, but soon became an unofficial day for all of China’s youth to celebrate -- or at least feel OK -- about being single.
Then in 2009, sensing a lull between the sales period of China’s National Day on Oct. 1 and Chinese New Year in late January or early February, Alibaba’s Jack Ma saw an opening: retail therapy to soothe lonely hearts.
The first year did only $7.5 million in sales, but just five years later, that record was broken in 12 hours.
What’s up this year?
The Countdown Gala
The countdown toward Singles Day has become a cultural event. Each year Alibaba holds a slickly produced live-streamed and televised countdown gala that has become more and more extravagant. The event held on the evening on Nov. 10 is basically a warm-up act until the flash sales go live at the stroke of midnight.
This year’s gala is set to features appearances by the likes musicians Pharrell Williams and Jessie J, basketball star LeBron James and tennis player Maria Sharapova. Alibaba’s Ma, a tai chi aficionado, is set unveil a short film starring himself performing martial arts alongside Jet Li, "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"’s Donnie Yen and Thailand’s Tony Jaa.
Unlimited alcohol supply?
Vendors are also getting creative to cut through the competition. The Chinese liquor brand Jiang Xiao Bai is offering an enticing deal for those who have an insatiable craving for the strong distilled Chinese spirit know as baijiu. As of this writing, Jiang Xiao Bai is offering 28 limited sets of a "lifetime supply" of baijiu for ¥11,111 ($1,672). The pictures of the bottles are wrapped with the words "This liquor is your partner for life."
If you buy their Singles Day set, the company will send you 12 3.4-ounce bottles a month until you die of natural causes, or liver failure. It appears they have taken that into account. The purchase agreement the company is circulating online says that within five years of purchase you can transfer the supply to a family member in the event of the original purchaser’s death.
The agreement also says that if the company folds anytime within 30 years of the purchase then the lifetime supply will be voided.
In One Hour, Alibaba’s Singles Day Sales Hit $10 Billion
On the eve of the annual Singles Day event in China, deliverymen sorted packages in Beijing.CreditFred Dufour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Singles Day — the frenzied annual celebration of consumption and commerce that is China’s much larger version of Black Friday — began as a protest of sorts against Valentine’s Day, propelled by college students in the 1990s.
The event’s date, written numerically as 11/11, was associated with unattached singles, known as “bare sticks.”
This year’s shopping festival entered new territory, blazing past $1 billion within two minutes of the holiday, starting at midnight on Saturday.
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At a logistics center in Nanjing, China, an employee prepared boxes to be used for express delivery. The first purchase during Singles Day this year was delivered less than 13 minutes after midnight. CreditChina Network/ReutersPhoto
Singles Day will test Alibaba’s logistics network. The company expects half a billion Chinese consumers to visit its platforms during the shopping festival; they will have access to more than 60,000 brands.CreditAgence France-Presse — Getty Images
Singles Day is now inextricably linked with Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce leviathan that in recent years has turned the holiday into an online — and occasionally brick-and-mortar — mercantile extravaganza. It routinely eclipses Amazon’s yearly Prime Day promotional event.
In July, Prime Day generated an estimated $1 billion in revenue during its 30-hour sale window, resulting in what Amazon called its “biggest day ever.” A little more than an hour into this year’s Singles Day, sales had already exceeded $10 billion.
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Jack Ma, the chairman of Alibaba Group, appeared with the actress Nicole Kidman during a gala on Friday in Shanghai to mark the company’s Singles Day promotions. CreditAly Song/ReutersPhoto
Alibaba’s Singles Day gala, held before the e-commerce giant’s annual shopping extravaganza, drew performers like the singers Pharrell Williams and Karen Mok. CreditAly Song/Reuters
The event has evolved into a cultural phenomenon. On Friday night, Alibaba hosted a lavish gala in Shanghai, directed by one of the producers behind the 2016 Academy Awards. Celebrities such as Nicole Kidman, Pharrell Williams and Maria Sharapova helped count down the moments before the 60,000 participating global brands released their Singles Day deals to shoppers.
One offer, from the Chongqing-based online alcohol brand Jiang Xiao Bai, allowed 33 fast-moving customers to make a single payment of 11,111 yuan, or $1,673, for a lifetime supply of a grain liquor known as baijiu.
Singles Day, which is largely powered through Alibaba’s Tmall marketplace, will test the company’s logistics network. The company promised delivery within an hour for certain products and, in advance of the shopping festival, converted nearly 100,000 stores across China into “smart stores” capable of processing payment using facial recognition and other advanced technologies.
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