Nov. 11 is Singles Day — Does it have a bigger impact than Black Friday?

This is the biggest holiday for online shopping in the world.

Singles Day is a Chinese shopping holiday. It started as a day of flash sale and has grown to be a multi-day online shopping event in November.

Is there another seasonal shopping event you can think of? Black Friday and Singles Day are both misnomers, as their deals can often last for weeks.

While there is no comparison between the two shopping holidays in perfect, these numbers are:

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  Alibaba and JD.com were the largest Singles Day retailers in 2017, with shoppers spending approximately $132.6 billion. This combined figure is based on data from Alibaba and JD.com and represents the first two weeks in November 2021.
  

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  According to Adobe, Black Friday was a day when shoppers spent $8.9 trillion. Cyber Monday 2021 saw shoppers spend $10.7 billion.
  

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  The holiday shopping season of 2021, which ran from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, was a total of $204.5 billion. According to Adobe.
  

American shoppers can look forward to even better deals in the final quarter of the year as more Western brands become more aware about Singles Day.

Singles Day has no roots in retail. A group of Chinese college students decided to make a joke out of being single in the 1990s and named Nov. 11 Singles Day. It’s either 11/11 or 1-1-1-1. People indulged in a few extravagant purchases on that day.

Naturally, retailers saw an opportunity. Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce company, adopted Singles Day in 2009 as a 24-hour online shopping spree. Alibaba offered special deals through its website and marketplaces. Third-party businesses can sell directly to consumers using Alibaba’s platform.

Singles Day is no longer a shopping holiday. In 2017, Alibaba made the event an 11-day affair and transformed it from a 24-hour event to the Alibaba Global Shopping Festival. It’s a popular cultural phenomenon in China. In 2019, Alibaba launched its 10th Singles Day with a huge gala in Shanghai, headlined by Taylor Swift.

According to research by the International Institute for Management Development, only 27 brands participated on the holiday in 2009. Alizila, the corporate news arm at Alibaba Group, reports that 290,000.0 brands will offer Singles Day deals in 2021.

Singles Day is a huge success. Alizila estimates that around 900 million people, just over 11% of all the world’s population, bought Singles Day deals during the two-week event. According to the National Retail Federation, almost 180 million people bought singles on Thanksgiving weekend (Black Friday, Cyber Monday).

Singles Day has two dominant players: Alibaba and JD.com. JD.com is another Chinese ecommerce company.

Alibaba is the largest online shopping company in the world. Alibaba Group, its holding company, says that Alibaba has 925 million active mobile users per month. Amazon, by comparison, has just 300 million active customer accounts.

Alibaba’s online shopping business has several marketplaces where third-party brands may offer customers special deals. According to Tmall Global, the main marketplace Tmall.com hosts approximately 25,000 brands from more than 100 countries. It recently opened a “luxury Pavilion” for designer brands.

Despite Singles Day being a huge event, very few U.S. retailers participated in it. However, this has changed recently as Western brands such as Nike and Sephora started to offer Singles Day products and discount code.

With more Western brands offering Singles Day discounts for U.S. customers, they should be on the lookout for online sales that pop up before Black Friday. Ryan Turner, founder of Ecommerce Intelligence (an online shopping analytics company), said in an email, “U.S. shoppers need to keep an eye out” for online sales.

Turner stated that searching for Singles Day deals in America is definitely worthwhile. He also said that shoppers may be surprised by the number of brands running 11/11 promotions.

Also, be sure to check out coupon websites. Andrea Woroch, a Bakersfield-based consumer finance and budgeting expert, recommends CouponFollow.com to find Singles Day deals. Woroch sent an email stating that the coupon aggregator will offer Double Cash-Back deals on Singles Day to participating retailers.

You can also check out which retailers have Singles Day offers last year. These brands were one of the first to offer Singles Day deals in November 2021.

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  Brooklinen.
  

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  Lovehoney.