Singles Day sales will rise to $21.45bn this week; totally eclipsing Black Friday and Cyber Monday claims ecommerce delivery specialist Fastlane International.
It believes that Singles Days sales will grow by $7.15bn – nearly 50% higher than last year. Although this may still be restricted to China Fastlane’s head of consumer research David Jinks, says we could be feeling its affect in the UK sooner than we think. “Today Singles Day is the biggest sales day on the planet; with $14.3bn spent online last year: dwarfing the entire combined US spend for Black Friday and Cyber Monday of $5.8bn, he says.
He says the impact will grow rapidly in the UK. “The vast majority of Singles Day sales are made in China on Alibaba’s Tmall site. However, AliExpress, the main sales outlet for Alibaba in the West, is also pushing Singles Day as ‘the world’s biggest global shopping day’. It’s previewing significant discounts on a wide variety of products,” he said.
Given many UK and US SME retailers source products for their businesses through AliExpress he believes it’s a fair bet the savings achieved by trade buyers using AliExpress will be passed on to their domestic customers during Black Friday and Cyber Monday perhaps fueling further increases for both.
Jinks also believes that marketplace traders and retailers may introduce their own independent Singles Day bargains. “Just as many e-commerce retailers have jumped on the Cyber Monday bandwagon once owned by Amazon, so UK and US merchants are likely to join in the Singles Day party. If a significant UK online retailer such as John Lewis were to adopt it; it could become more popular than Cyber Monday within five years,” he says.
Singles Day happens on November 11.
Image credit: Fastlane International
