Singles Day, the prefab shopping holiday created by Alibaba in 2009, saw just 5% sales growth over 2021, experts polled by CNN estimated, compared to a 15.5% gain in 2021, as the inflation-fueled ecommerce slowdown and fresh COVID-19 lockdowns in China acted as a drag on results.
Singles Day, really Singles Nearly Fortnight (to borrow a British term) running from Nov. 1-11, was hit by headwinds from an anemic economy, the pandemic, Chinese crackdowns and supply issues, increasing 8.5% to $84.54 billion for originator Alibaba, the lowest jump since its inception in 2009.
Boding well for the holiday spend here, the U.S. was the top seller of goods during Alibaba’s Singles Day 2020, which raked in $116 billion combined on Alibaba and JD.com. Alibaba itself reported $75.28 billion yuan in GMV, while JD.com said its Singles Day GMV was $40.72 billion. Sales from U.S. retailers topped $5 billion.
Alibaba set another Singles Day record this year on 11/11/19, recording $38.4 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) during the 24-hour promotion created as a reverse spin on Valentine’s Day 10 years ago, up 25% from last year. By comparison, Adobe is forecasting $29 billion in total ecommerce sales for Cyber Weekend 2019.
Alibaba set a new record on the 10th annual Singles Day by reaching more than $30.8 billion or 213.5 billion yuan in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 24 hours on Sunday. However growth is slowing and some observers question the GMV metric, while some Chinese consumers are less than enthusiastic.
While the holiday season is almost upon us here in the United States, China is gearing up for their own Black Friday-like holiday. Alibaba’s Singles Day or 11/11 is coming up this weekend. Here are seven things you need to know about Singles Day.
Continuing to dwarf U.S. sales holidays and Prime Day, Alibaba’s Singles Day pulled in a record 168.2 billion yuan ($25.3 billion) in gross merchandise value (GMV) settled through the Alipay platform, up 39% from 120.7 billion yuan ($17.8 billion) in 2016. See what other staggering stats and figures came out of Singles Day.
One thing that both Amazon’s Prime Day and Singles Day have in common is their ability to orchestrate the shipping of over a billion digital purchases in a short, saturated amount of time. Here are several ways Amazon and Alibaba approach shipping.