Singles’ Day ‘set to break records’

This article was firstly released by Internet Retailing.

Pent-up demand from Chinese consumers has already caused a surge in pre-sales ahead of the main discount day today, 11 November.

For the first time this year, Chinese etail giant Alibaba offered two shopping windows to “increase support for merchants affected by Covid-19 and offer more opportunities for consumers to snatch up good deals".

The first sales window ran on 1-3 November and brands notched up "impressive numbers" ahead of the second 24-hour window today. It reported that 100 brands – including Nike, Adidas and Apple – topped gross merchandise volume of RMB100m (£11.4m) in 111 minutes on 1 November.

In previous years, pre-sale began at the end of October and customers could only finalise their purchase on the day itself.

Net-a-Porter said this year's pre-sales exceed last year’s full-day sales within 12 minutes. Diane von Furstenberg achieved this in 23 minutes and Coach in 30 minutes.

Elena Gatti, managing director of digital commerce firm Azoya, which helps European brands enter the Chinese market, told Drapers: “This year is predicted to be the biggest year yet for sales, across all ecommerce platforms. Because of to the Covid-19 pandemic, Chinese consumers were not able to travel abroad as they used to in previous years.

"There has been a huge demand, particularly for luxury brands. This demand has been transferred from outbound tourism shopping to domestic shopping. With Singles' Day, they can use the opportunity to shop all the goods from the beloved brands they would have purchased while travelling.”

The number of luxury brands involved has doubled from last year. This includes Richemont brands such as Chloé on Alibaba’s Tmall Luxury Pavilion platform.

Some brands taking part in Singles' Day for the first time recorded impressive results in the early shopping window. Balenciaga beat its full-day sales record from Alibaba's 6.18 Mid-Year Shopping Festival just one minute into shopping. Kenzo did the same in three minutes, and Chloé in 10 minutes.

This year, AliExpress, Alibaba Group’s global retail online marketplace, is anticipating three times more participating brands outside China and global consumers from more than 200 countries and regions, versus a year ago. Read the full article at Drapers.