This coming Monday is November 11th. For China this means only one thing – retail.
11.11 is Singles’ Day and marks the largest online shopping event globally. Last year, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day saw sales of more than $30.8 billion (£23.9 billion) in just 24 hours, with the first billion in sales completed within 1 minute 25 seconds.
For comparison, Amazon’s Prime Day sales reached $4.2 billion (£3.3 billion) over its entire 36-hour online sale. Alibaba’s Singles Day eclipsed this mark just 10 minutes into their online event, making it 7x larger.
Even other famous retail days fall short. In 2018, sales on Black Friday reached $6.2 billion (£4.8 billion) and Cyber Monday rose to $7.9 billion (£6.1 billion), both of which are dwarfed by Alibaba’s event.
Now well established in the minds of global retail brands looking to reach a Chinese audience, what does 2019 hold in store? The team at Hot Pot have looked at consumer trends, Alibaba’s strategic initiatives and crunched some of this year’s Tmall pre-sale data to compile a list of predictions.
Premiumisation: Luxury brands will be more present and able to hold their premium positioning without excessive discounting. This will be a big win as Tmall have been keen to upgrade, with the launch of Tmall 2.0 (improved brand presentation capability on flagship stores) and a focus on Tmall Luxury Pavillion.
A shift from apparel to cosmetics: it is widely believed that female fashion, long a mainstay of sales on Singles’ Day, will be eclipsed by cosmetics sales in 2019. 3 days out from the festival itself, pre-sale stats show Estee Lauder with over 520,000 units sold of its Advanced Night Repair eye cream, with over RMB 1 billion in total pre-sales ($150m).
Live-streaming boom continues: Live streaming saw a major rebirth in 2019 and will be highly prominent during the festival, with KOLs and KOCs (Key Opinion Consumers) inspiring purchases (and likely pocketing commission to fuel their own spending). Tmall is increasingly encouraging global brands to involve their superstar brand ambassadors in. Kim Kardashian partnered with Chinese influencer Viya for a livestream that drove pre-sale of 150,000 units of her KKW perfume brand in a single day
Lower tier consumers: With incomes rising, growing sophistication and an increasing interest in a wider array of brands, the proportion of sales coming from lower-tier consumers is expected to rise significantly. Tier 2 and beyond is a major battle ground for Alibaba where impressive logistical infrastructure for eCommerce offsets consumers’ reduced access to physical retail. Savvy global brands are on top of this trend and will be targeting on a hyper-local basis
Going green(ish): Alibaba have been making a lot of noise around building a more sustainable footprint for the festival. We expect some movement her and plenty of PR fanfare from Alibaba around sustainable practices, but with more than a billion packages shipped, how much packaging will be generated?
Returns: to compound the sustainability point above, Tmall’s newly-implements returns policy will lead to higher volumes of deliveries sent back to distributors. Based on polling of our network, many fashion brands expect to see returns close to 50%.
A Rival to Chunwan? With Taylor Swift due to appear at this year’s Single’s Day extravaganza broadcast online and on TV, the event is increasingly similar to the chunwan. A late night is in store for all as many will be gathering, watching the show, meeting and eating with friends poised to convert their presales at the stroke of midnight on Sunday. Could 11.11 become a cultural rival to the chunwan – the traditional Chinese new year’s eve gathering?