China’s annual shopping frenzy shatters records again

Singles Day “is not a day of discounts, but rather a day of gratitude … It’s when retailers use the best products and best prices to show their gratitude to our consumers.” Alibaba founder Jack Ma

Online shoppers in China have shattered last year’s record of $24 billion in sales on the country’s annual buying frenzy Sunday, as the tradition marked its 10th year.

The spending binge has for years eclipsed Cyber Monday in the U.S. for online purchases made on a single day.

This year’s tally breaks from gloomy forecasts about the world’s second-largest economy, which is struggling with a tariff war with the U.S., a stock market slump and slowing overall growth.

Known as Singles Day, the clamour for deals and discounts was heralded with characteristic fanfare by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has turned an unofficial holiday for people without romantic partners into a yearly windfall for digital retailers.

A massive screen at Alibaba’s gala in Shanghai showed the surging sales numbers in real time: At 2 minutes and 5 seconds after midnight Saturday, 10 billion yuan ($1.43 billion) in purchases had already been made on Alibaba’s platforms.

By the 1 hour and 47 minute mark, that number had increased tenfold.

Just before 4 p.m. Sunday, the sales reached 168.2 billion yuan ($24.2 billion) — surpassing the total purchases from last year’s Singles Day, according to figures posted online by Alibaba Group.

Singles Day began as a spoof event celebrated by unattached Chinese university students in the 1990s. In Chinese, it’s called “Double 11,” after the numbers in the month and date.

The improvised holiday was co-opted by e-retailers in 2009 and transformed into China’s version of Cyber Monday, as the Monday after Thanksgiving is known.

Nearly $6.6 billion in sales were made on Cyber Monday in 2017, up about 17 per cent from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Ren Xiaotong, a 27-year-old accountant in Beijing, said she suspected online stores jacked up their prices in the lead-up to Singles Day so they could declare that items were discounted.

But in the end, her skepticism didn’t stop her from partaking.

“Singles Day is different now — it has more tricks than before,” Ren said.

“You only save a few dozens of yuan at the end. That being said, I still bought a pair of shoes, simply to celebrate the festival.”

The Twitter-like Weibo platform was blanketed with Singles Day-related posts on Sunday, from users proudly proclaiming that they had resisted the shopping urge this year to those who cheerfully listed an array of mundane purchases.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who will step down as chairman in less than a year, attended the start of the gala in Shanghai and appeared in a video message in which he wrapped up live hair crabs, a popular online purchase.

Singles Day “is not a day of discounts, but rather a day of gratitude,” Ma said in the video. “It’s when retailers use the best products and best prices to show their gratitude to our consumers.”