56. 11/11

Source: PYMNTS.com

The date 11/11 (November 11) is celebrated as Single’s Day, also known as Guanggun Jie or Bachelors Day in China. The day has become extremely popular among young Chinese adults who celebrate their pride in being single. The Chinese Single’s Day originated in 1993 at Nanjing University. The holiday grew out of the university’s cultural dorm. Interestingly, the holiday was named so because its date 11/11 represents four singles, hence the term ‘bare sticks day’. As the name suggests, Single’s Day began as an ‘anti-Valentine’ celebration for the Chinese.

Single’s Day has become the largest offline and online shopping day in the world. The day is marked with intensive shipping demands. This is observed in both e-commerce and retail shops, which offer huge discounts. Nearly 10,000 merchants sell to millions of shoppers. E-commerce sites are reportedly seen to be putting up all-nighters and working around the clock to keep up with the intense demands.

Very often, Single’s Day is compared to the Black Friday or Cyber Monday in the US. On this day, everyone buys themselves gifts, regardless of their relationship status. This year, particularly, Alibaba sold merchandise worth $38 million. It is considered to have broken records, by smashing Amazon Prime Day records, which bought about $5.8 billion in sales. Interestingly, Ali Baba saw commercial potential in Single’s day back in 2009 and started with the trend of offering a heavy discount on its products on this day. In the first year itself, consumers spent 50 million Yuan. In 2011, which was known as the Singles Day of the century, because it was 11.11.11, the company promoted the event on a major scale.

Thus we see that since 2009, we see a shift in perception about Single’s day. Today 11:11 has nothing to do with being single or not, it is the largest shopping holiday in China! Single’s day is seen as the day to boost sales.