Kicking off this midnight, the world’s largest online shopping event, Singles Day or 11.11, is expected to again set spending records.
While launched in China, Singles Day is expected to grow by 600 per cent this year in North America, with more than 200 US luxury retailers adding the online shopping holiday to their fourth-quarter offers.
Singles’ Day last year produced three times the volume of sales of America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. In Hong Kong, year-on-year sales increased by 177 per cent, with the latest sale promising to continue the upward trend.
Payments company Worldpay predicts record sales this year after a doubling of spending from 2014 to 2015, with the total volume of transactions rising 136 per cent. It processed on average more than 9000 transactions a minute globally during China Singles Day last year. Global spending peaked at 4pm HKT, at which point the company was processing more than 1000 payments a second.
In China, the average transaction value increased by 146 per cent year-on-year, while in Australia, year-on-year sales nearly doubled, with this year’s event expected to continue the trend of outstripping Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day sales. In Japan, year-on-year sales have grown by more than 223 per cent.
Meanwhile, eCommerce giant Alibaba Group has expanded its ballooning 11.11 Shopping Festival to a three-week long online retail extravaganza. US singer Katy Perry is its “global ambassador” and it has also roped in other celebrities for the gala.
