Singles Day: The West wants in

To receive the Vogue Business China Edit, sign up here. “Singles Day? We have been doing it for years,” says Nicola Antonelli, chief marketing officer of luxury multi-brand boutique Luisa Via Roma. The store, which has a physical flagship in Florence but does more than 90 per cent of its business online, adopted the Chinese marketing calendar in the early 2010s soon after launching a Mandarin version of its website. Luisa Via Roma is one of a steadily expanding number of Western brands and retailers promoting the Chinese shopping event outside of China. According to Edited, products first discounted during Singles Day week increased 9 per cent in the US and 86 per cent in the UK in 2019, including from brands and retailers as diverse as Macy’s, Asos, Furla, Uniqlo, The Modist and Opening Ceremony. “Singles Day’s mammoth success in China has influenced other global markets to get some skin in the game,” says Edited market analyst Kayla Marci, who expects stepped-up discounting this year. Participation in Singles Day in China and neighbouring Southeast Asian countries has been an open-door opportunity for Western brands for years. They can tap into a well-known and highly anticipated regional event attracting hundreds of millions of customers. The annual 11 November shopping event was originally launched by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba 12 years ago. Sales regularly surpass those of Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. Last year, on Alibaba’s platforms alone, sales reached a record $38 billion. Singles Day activities are not limited to promotions, but include the launch of limited-edition collections and new products, a feature that has encouraged discount-averse luxury brands like Cartier, Balenciaga and Chloé to join in. The growth of the shopping festival in the West has been a slow process. According to a survey conducted by YouGov, only 2 per cent of respondents interviewed in the UK this October were aware of Singles Day and planned to take advantage of discounts this year. In the US, where the event coincides with Veterans Day, a culturally different occasion, Singles Day falls in a month that is already saturated with big discounting events like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Only 3 per cent of shoppers plan to shop on Singles Day, says Deloitte. Many brands have also been vocal about the impact of excessive discounting, casting doubts on the allure of yet another shopping event on the calendar. But for the brands and retailers participating in Singles Day, these disadvantages can be turned into benefits. In particular, a lesser-known holiday allows brands more space to communicate with consumers with reduced competition. “Singles Day is a great way to connect our millennials consumers to brands in a shopping holiday that is not as crowded [as Black Friday and Cyber Monday],” explains Imran Khan, co-founder and CEO of e-commerce platform Verishop, launched in 2019. Khan believes that the association of Singles Day with self-care and discovery, a sort of “treat yourself” ethos, also sets it apart from the other shopping events, making it particularly fitting for a millennial audience obsessed with self-care and uniqueness. In China, Singles Day involves ever-more sophisticated promotion schemes such as gamification, live-streaming sessions, pre-orders, installment purchases, flash sales and exclusive product launches, says Xiaofeng Wang, senior analyst at Forrester. Simple coupons and discounts are no longer enough. This is a key point of difference from existing Western shopping holidays, which could set Singles Day apart as a novelty. Higher-end brands could participate choosing the best-fitting activation for their image. It’s a valuable extra opportunity to connect with consumers, says Daniel Alejandro Romano, co-founder and CEO of performing marketing agency Good Moose. “There is always space for new compelling events, especially now that everything is digital and we are competing more and more for users’ attention.” With 45 per cent of US consumers starting their holiday shopping in November, the month is vital for retailers. “In a year that has been absolutely whitewashed by the Covid crisis, skipping an opportunity to drive sales this November seems a bit shortsighted,” says Stuart McLennan, senior vice president of APAC at Rakuten Advertising. Following in the steps of Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday The growing appeal of Singles Day in the West has been welcomed by Alibaba, but it has not been planned, says Christina Fontana, head of fashion and luxury for Alibaba’s Tmall in the US and Europe. The tech giant promotes the event mainly inside its own ecosystem, which includes platforms such as Lazada in Southeast Asia, Trendyol in Turkey and Daraz in Pakistan. “If you are part of our platform then we do Double 11, but we are not going to push it outside of any of our platforms,” she says. Fontana sees the foreign adoption of Singles Day as part of a larger trend of Western brands applying learnings from operating on Tmall in China to other markets — “be it creating limited editions, doing live streaming or the way they interact with customers. With the acceleration that we have seen this year in e-commerce in the West, a lot of these things will be repeated in the local markets,” she says. The trajectory Singles Day is currently on has already been traced by both Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day. Black Friday, a quintessentially American event, has been adopted by retailers worldwide over the last 15 years, from Italy to India. Similarly, since its launch in 2015, Amazon Prime Day has become a day for deals on and off its namesake platform. “Prime Day wasn’t a thing for e-commerce companies three years ago, but now pretty much every e-commerce company that we work with is prepared for it,” says Romano, who expects adoption and awareness of Singles Day to increase in the next two to four years in a mutually reinforcing cycle. “When consumers are triggered [by an external shopping event] to buy or try a product, should brands give them an incentive and be aligned with the context or let them go somewhere else? It’s an interesting debate,” says Romano. Still a niche audience? US discounting platform Dealmoon has been offering Singles Day deals since 2013, a strategy that is well aligned with its consumer base, which mostly includes Chinese Americans and Chinese millennial expats. According to co-founder and CMO Jennifer Wang, they are still the demographic most aware of the event. In 2016, retailers on Dealmoon saw $2 million in sales through their Singles Day promotions. “[Singles Day happens] in a heavily promotional period and it’s an attempt to really capture that Chinese consumer group,” says Amie Song, senior specialist of APAC at Gartner, who believes it’s going to be a challenge for the event to resonate with consumers outside of that demographic. This year in particular, participating in Singles Day in the West will allow brands to catch those savvy Asian and Chinese consumers who are unable to travel abroad to make their purchases because of the Covid-19 pandemic. These shoppers have resorted to using cross-border e-commerce and will be on the lookout for deals come 11 November, says Forrester’s Wang. But for some participants in the West, the event has already outgrown its origin. Luisa Via Roma, Verishop and By Far do not target their Singles Day promotional activities and campaigns specifically to Chinese consumers or consumers with Chinese heritage. “Now, it’s a global commercial operation,” Antonelli of Luisa Via Roma says. “Alibaba made it famous, but that doesn’t mean that it is a Chinese holiday,” says Khan of Verishop. “It’s a global holiday.” Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Amazon Prime Day was held in November 2020 instead of October 2020. The article has been amended. (2 November 2020) To receive the Vogue Business newsletter, sign up here. Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com. 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