11 things you need to know about 11.11 Singles' Day

Embrace the craziest celebration of consumerism

On the surface, Singles’ Day (11.11) may sound like a bit of a sad affair, conjuring images of wallowing in loneliness and misery or lying in bed all day with a tub of Ben & Jerry’s. But Singles’ Day is actually Asia’s largest shopping bonanza and the world’s largest online shopping event. According to Forbes, last year the holiday racked up 17.8 billion USD (around 120.7 billion RMB). So, yeah, it’s a bit of a big deal.

If you’re thinking about joining in on the craze, here’s 11 things you should know about 11.11.

1. Singles’ Day originated in a Nanjing university dorm

While the actual origin of Singles' Day is debatable, most people have settled upon the story of how it emerged from the dormitories of Nanjing University in the mid-'90s. Four single university male students gathered to discuss how to break the shackles of the monotony of singlehood (remember those were pre-Tinder/Facebook days). One dude had the epiphany of deciding that November 11 would be representative of Singles' Day due to the number of ones in the date – 11-11 recalls the ‘bare sticks’ Chinese idiom, used to refer to people (mostly men) who stay single most of their lives.

Singles' Day made its rounds on social media, garnering more and more interest from singletons across China as a day to spend with friends, until in 2009, Alibaba co-opted the holiday to market a massive sales campaign. Now China has this absurdly successful commercial holiday born from post-modern laughter in the face of classic crushing loneliness.

2. Look out for fake deals and trick sales

According to the ‘Credibility Report of E-Commerce Companies on Double 11 Online Shopping Festival 2016’ some Singles’ Day deals are deals in name only. In 2016, 62 percent of complaints filed with the authorities on Singles’ Day were related to false advertising, hidden discount restrictions and other sales schemes. As always, it’s important to make sure that you buy from trustworthy sellers. So shop carefully.

3. Kuaidi's will be crazy (crazier)

On the back of China’s e-commerce boom, the country's courier sector has grown into the world's largest in terms of delivery volume for years. Still, courier services strain under the volume, and the Singles’ Day sales period doesn’t help. According to the numbers from China’s State Post Bureau, Chinese postal and courier companies handled a total of 251 million packages on Singles’ Day. For this year, China Express Association predicts that the industry will handle more than 1 billion packages for Singles’ Day shopping from November 11-16. Be ready for delays on your stuff.

4. Read the fine print and do your own maths

The rules and online promotions for Singles’ Day get more complicated every year. Ideas like pre-launch, pre-order, money-off and price protection policies need some careful reading to make sure you know what you’re buying into. Also, combining and separating orders might disqualify you from discounts. Best to keep that old TI-84 graphing calculator by your side as you measure up your savings.

5. Don't turn this festival into ‘hands-chopping’ festival

Chinese netizens have taken to a gruesome nickname for Singles’ Day. ‘Hands-Chopping Festival’ (剁手節), as in ‘If I buy one more thing, I will chop my hands off.’ Everyone buys at least one more thing, no one actually chops off their hands, but many people do fall into the trap of spending more than they should. Selling your dismembered hands is not a good way to get out of debt, unless you’re in debt with the right people.

6. Record-breaking spending

Every Singles’ Day, in the press centre at Alibaba’s headquarters, a huge screen live-tracks the number of transactions and RMB spent. Last year, 10 billion RMB in transactions were made just six minutes and 58 seconds after the launch of sales. That was almost six minutes faster than the time it took to reach the same number in 2015. By 3.20pm, sales volume surpassed 91.2 billion, the sales volume for the entire day in 2015. Let's see if Singles’ Day will continue to break its own records.

7. Star-studded Alibaba gala

For Singles’ Day 2016, Alibaba ran a four-hour, nationally televised gala on the eve of November 11. It featured Victoria and David Beckham, Scarlett Johansson, One Republic, Kobe Bryant and Victoria’s Secret models. According to Forbes, the show earned a domestic viewership of 200 million and at least 10 million outside China.

This year, Alibaba hasn’t yet revealed the full line-up of their Singles’ Day launch gala, but singer Jessie J and Pharrell Williams are both rumoured to perform on the stage of the Alibaba gala in Shanghai this Friday, and some A-list Chinese celebrities such as Fan Bing Bing, Kris Wu and Chris Lee have also been included on the playbill.

8. Spam messages and fraud go up around Singles’ Day

According to Shanghai Consumer Right Protection Commission, complaints received during the 2016 Singles’ Day sales period made up 12.7 percent of the total consumer complaints for the year. They were mostly about false promoting information, unfulfilled purchase promises, and after-sales service failures. Beijing's Public Security Bureau also received 532 reports of fraud during Double 11 period last year, with each individual losing about 9,233RMB on average.

9. Singles' Day is going global

Last year, Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten, opened a Chinese cross-border e-commerce site, specialising in foreign goods, to get a piece of that Singles' Day sales volume. Some Thai businesses also set up their flagship stores on Chinese e-commerce platforms. In Russia, the popularity of Chinese online retailers has been growing for the past few years. In 2013, Russia added China’s Singles’ Day its own sales calendar. In 2016, the number of Russian orders made on Chinese sales platforms was 31 times larger than in 2015. So who knows what the future holds...

10. Singles’ Day is going green

The tremendous amount of purchases on Singles’ Day means a lot of packages, a lot of cardboard, and a lot of waste after people unpacking all of their parcels. In 2017, Chinese courier companies in 2017 have already used a total of 6.8 billion plastic bags, 3.4 billion plastic sleeves, 8.6 billion cardboard boxes, and more than 3 billion rolls of adhesive tape. The main component of packaging materials, polyvinyl chloride, can take hundreds of years to degrade.

This year, Suning introduced a recyclable delivery box. The ‘share box’ is light, foldable and portable. When you sign for your package and collect its contents, the courier will reuse the yellow box for the next delivery.

11. Be prepared for 12.12

Yes, Double 11 is not enough. Marketing genius Jack Ma must have more, so he has launched Double 12 for this year.

It’s much smaller in scale compared to Singles’ Day. Double 12 is for those small online vendors that can’t join the 11.11 party because they sell low-demand niche products and lack the manpower to handle big sales volumes. Also, for Double 12 Taobao requires sellers to sell their items half-off if they want to be a part of the promotion. Over 2 million sellers have registered to participate in this year’s Double 12.

To check out more about Singles' Day, hit 'Read more'.

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