It’s time to quit ‘Singles Day’

This month sees China’s 16th Double 11 shopping day, also known as Singles Day.

Over the years, the Double 11 period has been constantly stretched, partially to make GMV figures look better. This year, Double 11 started on October 14th, almost one month in advance. Douyin and JD even started on October 8th!

For weeks, there have been ‘pre-sales’, ‘warm-ups’, ‘category days’, etc. But it doesn’t really matter anymore; since 2022, the e-com players have stopped publishing Double 11 GMV figures altogether. We all know what that means.

But without a doubt, all the e-com players will find new bits of data trying to prove how successful it all was, as they did in 2022 and 2023. Instead of GMV, they will tell you that more customers than ever purchased during the (longer!) period or how many brands had more than x million in sales.

Alibaba is now cancelling the Double 11 TV Gala that kicked off the festival on the eve of November 11th ever since 2015. For years, it has been a place where random unknown foreigners were paraded doing silly games and Western pop and movie stars would make appearances (including a cringeworthy rap duo performance of a Double 11 rap song by Pharrell Williams and since-disgraced Kris Wu, Scarlett Johansson awkwardly doing card tricks with Jack Ma and Nicole Kidman being flown in to announce Ma’s short ego-trip kong fu movie) and. Good riddance.

Alibaba claims the gala budget is used for consumer discounts instead. Others say the gala has become an unnecessary expense in these days of the Alibaba 1+6+N group's focus on profitability.

And it has not helped the average merchant…

Li Ling of Liansheng wrote, “Why is Double 11 becoming less attractive to consumers? First, it is less attractive to merchants. Merchants are unwilling to provide truly good products for real discounts, so consumers are less attracted. Why are merchants like this? This is because the platform does not respect merchants enough. Today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, and every day, they want me to give the lowest discount. Then where is my profit for the whole year?”

“What's more, the return rate of the things you sell is so high; what should I do? How can I make ends meet? (..) The products are getting worse and worse, the quality is getting lower and lower, and the price is indeed getting lower and lower.” According to Lianshang, return rates for clothing products during Double 11 increased from 25-30% in 2016 to as high as 80%.

Double 11 has become an unnecessary shopping festival now that all platforms try to outdo each other with the lowest prices all year around. Alibaba further diluted the impact of Double 11 by creating many other shopping festivals (8.8, 12.12) and participating in those of others (JD’s 618). Centralized TV shopping galas have been replaced by countless livestreams in which stuff is sold.

Between 2021 and 2023, the percentage of Chinese consumers enthusiastic about Double 11 dropped from 75% to 53%. It’s probably even lower this year.

Double 11 played a role when China’s e-commerce market was emerging. Now, it’s just a stressful legacy from days past. Cancelling the Double 11 Eve gala TV show is a good start.

Last year, Alibaba’s former chairman Daniel Zhang ‘resigned’ when the old guard of Joe Tsai and Eddy Wu took over. Figuratively speaking, when they escorted him to the door, they should have put the Single Day, which Zhang ‘invented’ (actually, he nicked from Nanjing University students), in his cardboard box.