Celebrate Singles Day with xtraWine from November 10th to 13th with discounts and promotions on a wide range of products in our catalog.
Not familiar with Singles Day? Don’t worry; xtraWine has you covered.
Index:
- What is Singles Day?
- From Singles Celebration to Shopping Event
- Singles Day vs. Black Friday
- Singles Day Worldwide
What is Singles Day?
Singles Day, also known as Bachelors Day, is a celebration for singles. In China, it’s an unofficial holiday that originated in 1993 at Nachino University.
Four male students decided to create a day to honor being single. Their aim was to counterbalance Valentine’s Day, a day dedicated to couples.
The celebration started within the university and eventually spread throughout society.
In 2011, in Beijing alone, 4,000 couples tied the knot.
Why November 11th?
This date holds symbolic significance in China.The number “1” represents an unmarried individual, while “11” symbolizes two people together. “Four 1s” represent two or more couples, each composed of two single individuals.
From Singles Celebration to Shopping Event
In 2009, Daniel Zhan, SEO of Alibaba, one of the world’s leading B2B commerce platforms, utilized this day to offer 24 hours of online and offline shopping discounts.
Today, it has become the largest shopping event.
Singles Day in Numbers
In 2018, Alibaba’s gross merchandise volume reached $30.7 billion.
Sales on Alibaba, in 2019, increased by 26% to $38.4 billion.
In 2021, both Alibaba and JD.com set a record of $139 billion in sales, with 290,000 brands on Alibaba’s platforms, including Tmall, Taobao, and Aliexpress.
Instead, in 2022, both Alibaba and JD did not disclose sales results due to economic challenges related to Covid-19 in China.
Singles Day also includes cultural events. For instance, Alibaba hosts grand celebrations with celebrities the night before the big shopping day. In 2017, Nicole Kidman was part of the festivities, Taylor Swift in 2019, and Katy Perry in 2020.
Singles Day vs. Black Friday
In 2017, Singles Day in China surpassed Black Friday in terms of revenue, with approximately $25 billion in sales, including $1 billion within the first eight minutes.
In the same year, the combined sales of all U.S. shopping holidays, including Black Friday, Thanksgiving Day, and Cyber Monday, didn’t match the Chinese market.
Black Friday generated $5 billion, Cyber Monday $6.6 billion, and Thanksgiving Day $2.87 billion, for a total of $14.47 billion.
This success in China was due to a remarkable logistics challenge, with the first package delivered just 13 minutes after purchase, and guaranteed one-hour delivery for some products.
Here are some figures from Forbes:
- 140,000 participating brands
- 15 million available products
- 1.5 billion payments processed with Alipay, Alibaba’s online payment platform, with 90% of these payments made through mobile devices
Singles Day Worldwide
In the UK, National Singles Day is celebrated on March 11th, with experts organizing events for singles.
MediaMarkt, the German company, promotes Singles Day in its stores.
In Norway, in 2016, the electronics retailer Elgiganten organized a day for singles.
In Indonesia, this holiday is nicknamed “Harbolnas” in some e-commerce platforms, signifying an online shopping day.
