Singles’ Day is one of the biggest shopping days of the year. You might not know much about it. It is on November 11, and last year it brought in more than $139 billion in sales around the world.
Even though this holiday started in Asia, more and more people in the US, UK, and other western countries are celebrating it. Last year, many companies in North America and Europe started offering deals for the 11th of November. As this holiday gets closer, you may want to think about putting together a good sales plan for your eCommerce as well.
What’s Singles’ Day and how was it born?
Alibaba Group made Singles’ Day in the 1990s as a sort of anti-Day Valentine’s to get single people to buy themselves gifts. The idea was to boost sales by getting single people to buy themselves gifts.
The holiday is on November 11 because the date is written as 11-11, which only means one and is a good symbol for single people.
Over the years, this day has become more and more popular. People not only buy staff on this day, but they also host parties, often dating events to find their soulmates, and it has also become a very popular day for weddings.
Is Singles’ Day bigger than Black Friday?
Every year, Singles’ Day sales got bigger and bigger until they were bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday. From the chart on Statista.com, you can see that Alibaba’s gross sales for 2021 were more than 84.54 billion US dollars, and Techcrunch calculated that worldwide sales were 2.5 times bigger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday put together.
Even if online sales in the US hit a record $28.49 billion on Black Friday week, Singles’ Day sales will be higher than those during the 5 days of Black Friday week (Adobe Analytics). On Black Friday, people spent $7.2 billion, and on Cyber Monday, they spent $9.4 billion.
Two big companies drive sales in both Asia and the west: 11-11 by Alibaba group and BFCM by Amazon. Both companies tried to make the sales window bigger. Last year, Amazon’s Prime Day, which was the unofficial start of BFCM week, brought in $10.45 billion in sales, which was 45% more than the year before.
Instead, Alibaba added a promotional window from November 1 to November 3 of last year. According to Bloomberg, Nike and Apple were among the 100 brands that made about $15 million in sales during the first 111 minutes of sales on November 1. The first company to sell more than 1 billion yuan on Alibaba’s Tmall platform was Esteé Lauder.
Last year’s Singles’ Day was a big success thanks in large part to Live Streaming Sales. Even famous stars and idols took part in the live events.
Why you should pay attention to Singles’ Day
Singles’ Day started as a Chinese holiday, but it is becoming more popular in the west every year. It’s important to note that a lot of people from the US and UK also shop during Singles Days, not just Chinese people.
As more and more people in the US and Europe learn about this new holiday, sales are growing at an exponential rate, especially in the US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, and France.
Just as an example, on Singles’ Day in 2020, the UK made over 1.44 billion pounds and France made over 900 million pounds.
Last year, a lot of brands offered deals on November 11, and this year, even more businesses will try to make money on Singles’ Day. So why not try to get some of this action for your eCommerce as well?
Learn from the past to scale
You may have noticed that a lot of big brands always try to get a jump on Black Friday to stand out from the huge amount of competition that happens around BFCM.
There have been many “Countdown to Black Friday” or “pre-Black Friday” sales in the past few years, so why not use Singles’ Day as well?
Dropship-empire gives you some good ideas in our catalog, where you can look at them.
With us, you can even make custom products and packaging to make your products seem more expensive and boost holiday sales, or you can just include coupons or thank-you cards in your dropshipping packaging.