Singles’ Day, the world’s largest online shopping day, is about to get even bigger.
Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and its Off Fifth discount arm, Bloomingdale’s and Bergdorf Goodman have teamed up with Dealmoon.com to offer huge markdowns for the promotional day, Wednesday.
Jennifer Wang, co-founder of the bargain-oriented e-commerce site, anticipates major success for the retailers.
“We are not only serving up some of the best deals of the year on 11/11 for luxury brand shoppers,” she said, “but these department stores are excited to partake in the traffic we can generate for them. On Nov. 10 at midnight, we will unveil an incredible list of promotions. Many of the brands’ offers are steeper discounts than their own Black Friday deals.”
Singles’ Day was started in 1993 by young Chinese citizens who were fed up with holidays that celebrated relationships and who wanted instead to celebrate their singlehood. Now, it has escalated to much more than that.
In 2012, the day (also known as Double Eleven) garnered $3.1 billion in online sales. The number ballooned to $5.75 billion the next year, surpassing the sales of Cyber Monday by more than double and Black Friday by nearly five times over. In 2014, Chinese consumers spent roughly $9.3 billion on Singles’ Day. Cyber Monday, meanwhile, fell short with $2.65 billion and Black Friday had only $1.5 billion to show.
And this year looks set to smash all records: Online shoppers spent more than $1 billion on Alibaba’s sites within eight minutes of the clock striking midnight.