11/11 The Shopping Festival 💳

While Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Amazon’s Prime Day have all become celebrated days of shopping, the world’s largest shopping day is by far today’s 11/11 Singles’ Day.

• Alibaba commercialized this unofficial holiday in 2009 as a counter to Valentine’s Day to celebrate being single. 
• It recorded $38BN sales last year, 2.5 times U.S. sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. 
• This year, Alibaba introduced two sales periods to ride in on Chinese shopper's mentality of discontent towards the restrictions placed by COVID-19 in regards to travel and shopping and want a venue to spend. They have coined the term ‘revenge spending.’

Why it Matters in the U.S. 
While this makeshift holiday is only slowly trending amongst American companies’ marketing practices, companies aiming to break into the global market, especially retail, must take advantage of this holiday.

• Verishop, an eCommerce service that operates in the apparel industry, states that they take advantage of the time because promotion space is less crowded compared to Black Friday and Cyber Monday
• Meanwhile, footwear brand Allbirds participated in Singles Day for the first time in 2019 and generated $12BN of gross merchandise value in just the first hour. 
• Bissell Homecare leveraged live streaming to market its 144-year-old vacuum cleaner business for Singles’ Day with great success, tapping into the Chinese market last year and plans to do more this year. 

Livestream Ecommerce
Coresight Research estimates Livestream shopping will bring in $125BN in sales this year in China, double its sales in 2019. In comparison, the U.S. market is valued only at $5BN. 

• Within just 10 minutes of presales on October 21, Alibaba’s Taobao Live exceeded the total GMV of its first day of presale in 2019. 
• Amazon started using Amazon Live in 2019 for Prime Day.
• Popshop Live received $3MM seed funding in July to build its Livestream shopping platform. 
• Facebook also acquired Packagd, a startup that allows video shopping in December 2019.