Why eCommerce owners should pay attention to Singles’ Day

Maybe you don’t know much about it, but Singles’ Day is one of the biggest sales days of the year. It falls on the 11th of November and last year it brought in more than $139 billion worldwide in sales.

Even though this holiday has its roots in Asia, it is becoming more and more popular across the US and UK and other western countries. Last year many North American and European companies started offering deals for the 11th November, therefore as this holiday approaches you may think of preparing a good sales strategy for your eCommerce too.

What’s Singles’ Day and how was it born?

Created by Alibaba Group in the ’90s it started as a kind of anti-Valentine’s Day, an expedient to increase the company sales by pushing single people to treat themselves with gifts.

The holiday was placed on the 11 of November because this date is written as 11-11, so it only comprehends the number one and well represents singles.

Over the years this day has grown in popularity, and people started not only to purchase staff but also to organize social events, often dating gatherings to find soulmates and it also became a really popular day for weddings.

Is Singles’ Day bigger than Black Friday?

Singles’ Day Sales grew more and more every year, becoming even higher than Black Friday and Cyber Monday’s. As you can see in the Statista.com chart, last year Alibaba’s gross sales for 2021 were more than 84.54 billion US dollars and Techcrunch calculated that worldwide sales were 2.5 times larger than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined!

Alibaba’s sales from 2011 to 2020 (Source: Statista)

In 2020, Singles’ Day sales were higher than the revenues generated in the 5 days of the Black Friday week also if in the US online sales reach a record of $28.49 billion (Adobe Analytics). $7.2 billion was spent only on Black Friday, while Cyber Monday generated $9.4 billion in digital sales.

Sales in Asia and in the western countries are both driven by 2 big companies: 11-11 by Alibaba group and BFCM by Amazon. Both companies tried to increase the sales window and last year Amazon’s Prime Day, which gave the unofficial start to the BFCM week, brought $10.4 billion in sales with a + 45% on the former year.

Alibaba, instead, added a promotional window from Nov 1 – Nov 3 last year and Bloomberg reported that during the first 111 minutes of sales on Nov. 1, Nike and Apple were some of the 100 brands generating about $15 million in transactions. Esteé Lauder was the first to pass 1 billion yuan in sales on the company’s Tmall platform.

Live Streaming Sales took a big part in the success of last year’s Singles’ Day with even famous stars and idols participating in the live events.

Why you should pay attention to Singles’ Day

Singles’ Day was born as a Chinese holiday, but it is now becoming every year more popular also in western countries. It is important to point out that not only the Chinese are buying products during Singles Days, but also many shoppers in the US and UK.

statistic_id1089664_singles-day-awareness-level-among-consumers-in-europe-2019-2020

(Source: Statista)

As more and more people in the US and Europe are aware of this new holiday, especially in the US, UK, Germany, Netherland and France sales are growing at an exponential rate.

Just to give you an example, in 2020, Singles’ Day generated over 1,44 billion pounds in UK and €900 million pounds in France.

Last year many brands proposed deals during 11-11, and this year even more companies will try to benefit from Singles’ Day. So why don’t you try to get a piece of this pie for your eCommerce too?

Learn from the past to scale in 2022

As you may have noticed, many big brands are always trying to get a head start on Black Friday to emerge from the huge competition around BFCM.

In the last few years, there has been plenty of pre-Black Friday sales or “Countdown to Black Friday” sales, so why not use Singles’ Day as well?

The 11th of November seems a perfect time to get an early start on your Black Friday and Christmas sales, especially considering the fact that this “new” holiday grows in popularity every year.

Below we will put a list of Singles’ Day Deals for 2022 to help you understand what other companies are doing, and get inspiration for increasing your own sales. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to find some bestsellers to offer your customers for this occasion!

Yakkyofy give you some nice suggestions on our catalog to see them just

With us, you can even create customized products and packaging to increase the perceived values of your products and boost your holiday sales or simply include some coupons or thank you cards in your dropshipping packaging.

Learn More Here