Alibaba is planning to upgrade this year’s Singles’ Day, also known as Double 11 Festival, to make it into a shopping carnival. The announcement was made by Liu Bo, vice-president of Alibaba Group and general manager of Tmall’s operations department.
What is Singles’ Day?
Singles’ Day was introduced by Alibaba in 2009 and, since then, it has become the biggest shopping festival in the world – trumping sales from Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. The event takes place on November 11 and was originally created to celebrate single people as 4 ‘1s’ are lined up together.
For a taste of the value of Singles’ Day to Chinese companies, just look at Alibaba’s Tmall figures from 2019:
- 10 billion RMB in less than two minutes
- 30 billion RMB in approximately 5 minutes
- 50 billion RMB in 13 minutes
- 268.4 billion RMB throughout the whole day
2020 Singles’ Day shopping season
This year, the Singles’ Day shopping season will be split into two phases: the first one will begin on November 1st and the second one on November 11th.
Alibaba aims to create more opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses and help merchants recover from the impact of COVID-19. They will also put a focus on offering a platform for merchants selling new domestic products and agricultural products.
It is predicted that over 250,000 brands and 5 million merchants will take part.
Find out more with Qumin’s guide about Singles’ Day and what brands can do.
