In ten years’ time, we may well no longer know 11 November as an Armistice, but rather as a shopping holiday? If that were to be the case, it would be due to Alibaba, who this year even managed to entice Taylor Swift. Even Carrefour has come over to the idea.
Fashion shows and world stars
On 11 November, Taylor Swift will perform at the opening gala of Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival, better known as Singles’ Day. This unofficial holiday, which once began as an anti-Valentine joke by single students at Chinese universities, will result in an estimated 500 million customers this year for Alibaba. It grew to become a huge media spectacle, which features an opening gala where Pharell Williams and Mariah Carey have performed in earlier years.
China is now preparing for two days full of online bargains and new product launches: last year, 170,000 brands competed, and now there are 200,000. In addition, CEO Daniel Zhang is very pleased that 22,000 of these brands originate from outside of China. For Western fashion and luxury brands in particular, there is even a fashion show beforehand, where onlookers can order the catwalk’s clothes from home by a single click in the app.
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A need for new customers
Last year, the discount festival reached some 400 million Chinese people, who together shopped for items worth 27 billion euros. A year earlier, the group achieved a turnover of 25 billion euros during the two-day period. Will this spectacular growth continue this year?
The Chinese retail giant sees online growth slowly decelerating as the market in modern metropolises gradually reaches maturity. Online retailers, such as Alibaba and rival Tencent, must therefore turn to less developed areas and, therefore, to offline retail as well.
Singles’ Day has an important role to play in this as well: the spectacular high mass of consumerism in communist China is the best possible propaganda for Alibaba – and its competitors who are eagerly surfing its wave. Alibaba’s gross sales during the festival last year were higher than all US sales on Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, Zhang stresses.
Armistice party or shopping party?
The fact that Carrefour is riding on the tails of the hype should not come as a surprise, particularly since the Chinese activities of this hypermarket group have recently been linked to the fate of Alibaba: as of this spring, retail chain Suning has owned 80 % of the local branch of the French group, while the company is 20% owned by Alibaba itself.
More worthy of note is the fact that Carrefour is also bringing Singles’ Day to France: on 11 November, 11,111 French customers can benefit from the retailer’s 11 % discount, which can be used both in hypermarkets and online. In order to be in with a chance, customers must register on the website of the supermarket group, where they will receive an e-coupon.
After the adoption of Black Friday, Singles’ Day is becoming more and more popular in Europe. Last year, bol.com, H&M, Hunkemöller, Ici Paris XL and Media Markt, among others, also performed stunts by way of celebrating this new festival day. And they enjoyed a level of success, with bol.com calling it “the busiest Saturday of the year” at the time. So are we celebrating the Armistice or our shopping basket on November 11th?
