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Behind the Numbers: an EMARKETER Podcast
Retail’s Biggest Shopping Festival: The Singles’ Day Opportunity with AliExpress | Reimagining Retail
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- [00:06]
A
Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, May 20th. Welcome to eMarketers weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives. And I'm your host, Susie Deva Kenyon. On today's episode, we're talking about singles day, the biggest shopping event in the world that's just starting to make its way into the US and it's not just about deals. It's about self gifting, discovery, and creating moments shoppers actually want to engage with. So joining me today is podcast regular principal analyst Sky Canavas. Hey, Sky.
- [00:42]
B
Hey, Susie. It's great to be back.
- [00:43]
A
I'm so happy to have you and especially for this episode. And we have our special guest, Chris Carle, head of marketing and commercial strategy for the US with AliExpress. Hey, Chris.
- [00:54]
C
Hey, Suzy. Hey, Sky. Nice to be here with you both. Thanks for having me.
- [00:58]
A
We're so excited. But before we even get started, I thought we could do a very quick. In 30 seconds or less, Chris, tell us, what do you do? In a sentence.
- [01:08]
C
Yeah, like you said, I run marketing and commercial strategy for Alibaba's consumer marketplace here in the United States. So building awareness, building trust with the US audience. And I've been doing that for right around three years.
- [01:22]
A
Amazing. And at this moment in time, what is your favorite? Just pick one. Book, podcast, TV show, movie.
- [01:31]
C
Oh, there's so much good stuff out there right now. I, I want to say the second season of Beef. I don't know if you saw the first season. Really cool concept. The second season is, is really just a, you know, it's the passive aggressive war between two couples that's just set in this very beautiful country club in Montecito. Incredible acting, very anxiety inducing, but in a good way. I don't know if you've seen the studio. It's kind of like that. So it's, it's very fast paced. It really like, really, really grabs me. So I highly recommend.
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A
This does not sound like a multitasking kind of show. You have to be all in to watch.
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C
Exactly.
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A
Sky, do you know it?
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B
No, I don't.
- [02:12]
A
Me too. I have to look it up. I kind of like being able to multitask, so I, I go for those more Hallmark y movies and stuff.
- [02:20]
C
Oh, yeah. This is definitely. You have to pay attention.
- [02:22]
A
Yeah. But that brings us to singles day. It's the biggest shopping event in the world. It's built on massive scale, deep discounts and a level of gamification and entertainment. That we don't actually really see much in the US it started as a niche student driven moment and was turned into a global retail phenomenon by Alibaba in the US it's still pretty early. Some brands are starting to experiment with this. They're often leaning into this idea of self gifting or using it as a kickoff to the actual holiday shopping. But for most shoppers, it's really not quite on their radar yet. So before we get into what this could become here and what brands should actually do with it, let's start with just how big this moment really is. So, Chris, Singles Day is known for some pretty wild numbers. What are some of the stats that you can share with us that capture just how over the top this event is in China or globally? Like I remember, though, there is no proof that perhaps there's a Lamborghini sold every 45 seconds or so at one of the Singles Day events several, several years ago.
- [03:27]
C
Yeah, great start, Susie. It's true there are, there are some really crazy stories around Singles Day. But let's quickly go back to how it all started. You already referenced it a little bit, but I always find it so fascinating to look at the, the origin story because it really just, it, it just started as a prank at a university in Nanjing in 1993. It was a couple of, couple of single students that were, you know, they were sick and tired of celebrating Valentine's Day, so they wanted to start the anti Valentine's Day and they chose as their date November 11, which is just a bunch of ones perfectly representing singles. And what started as this prank just caught on like wildfire across campuses, across China. And then to your point, in 2009, Alibaba kind of recognized the cultural momentum of this day and turned it into what started as just a shopping holiday. And now it is truly the biggest shopping holiday in the world. And estimates for last year put it at around $236 billion just in China across platforms during the event. So that, that can span several days, several weeks, but it's a gigantic number. It's kind of as if the entire US bought a MacBook Neo, every single person to kind of put that into perspective, right? Black Friday in the US is 12 and a half billion dollars. So so it's truly at a massive scale. Just on Alibaba, 300,000 brands participated. And we do something really cool at Alibaba ever since it started, we host the Singles day gala on the 10th of November. So on the eve of Singles Day and in 2019, we actually had Taylor Swift perform at our Singles Day gala in Hangzhou. So that kind of just gives you an idea for just how massive and how important Singles Day is, especially in Asia and China. And it's certainly the most exciting period for us every year.
- [05:23]
A
Sky is smiling. Were you there?
- [05:25]
B
No, but I remember the 2019 Taylor Swift appearance because that was before Taylor Swift was as big as she is now, but still a huge celebrity. And it's just a testament not only to how big it is in shopping, but culturally it's a huge event, I think another part of its big scale, not just how much it generates in sales, but the duration. You know, it started as a day and it's so much more now. Last year was the longest singles day. It's now a five week shopping season that consumers plan for and think about and strategize about. So it's so entrenched. And I think that's really hard for like a US consumer to think of where most of our sales events are like a couple of days or even a week. Like you see Amazon, they extended prime day to four days from one day. But that's, that's really minuscule compared to the scale of Singles Day in China now.
- [06:19]
A
Well, it's interesting because Chris, you said it's actually a whole event. As American brands start to think about leaning into this and as you think about the two different markets, China and the us, what's fundamentally different? So length of an event that we're used to is different. What else is different?
- [06:35]
C
Yeah, it's really true to Sky's point. It's just an event at a massive scale. It's something that I think the US consumer is just not used to yet at all. And I really think it boils down to two, three things. Number one, I think it's just the infrastructure aspect. And by infrastructure, I don't really mean logistics, it's just more. So how does E commerce work in China? Right. In the U.S. e Commerce launched pretty much around desktops and then has slowly adapted. In China, they just went straight, straight to mobile first. Which is why we also see things like these super apps in China, like the wechats, the alipays of the world, where you have so many functions aggregated into one single app. You kind of see Uber trying to do that right now, but it is so much more advanced in China. So if you think about WeChat for instance, right? It's like as if you had WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Apple, Pay, Uber, Lyft, everything in one app. If you look at Alipay, which is, which is part of the Alibaba universe. You can do even more so you can pay utility bills, you can book flights train tickets, you can pay for traffic violations, you can, you can book your hospital stay. It's kind of, of kind of crazy what you can do on these apps. And so if you think about Singles Day, when that rolls around, this infrastructure is already in everybody's pockets where they can purchase socially, they can purchase instantly in a super engaged way that just makes a holiday like, or shopping holiday like, like Singles Day so much more impactful if everything's really at your fingertips. The second thing I think is, is E Commerce penetration. E Commerce represents about 50% of all retail sales in China, which is absolutely massive because in the US we're only. That might seem surprising to many people, but you know, because you always think of the US as this massive E commerce powerhouse, which it is. I mean we're at one point, four or five trillion dollars I think at this point, but it still only represents 16 or 17% of overall sales. And so if you have this 50% E commerce penetration and Singles Day is just this very E commerce first shopping holiday that just has a dramatically outsized impact on how big something like that can be. And then the last point is just the cultural one. Singles Day really is a cultural phenomenon. It's now been around for 17 years or we're in the 17th year. People are really, really excited about it. It's big on their calendar. They save up for it. And there's this, there's this Chinese term which is hu niao, which basically means happily crowded, lively energy. It's, I think kind of Ophelia we all know, but it's basically the sentiment that when a bunch of people do the same thing at the same time, it's just this massive, it has, you know, massive momentum. It's something you want to be part of. It basically instills FOMO in everybody and, and that's what's really, really powerful. And entertainment is also at the forefront of Singles Day. If you look at all the, what all the retailers and E Commerce players are doing, there's countdown clocks everywhere. There's spin to win mechanisms, there's reward based games, there's location based features. It's, it's, it's very, very all encompassing. And in the US we just don't have that ritual yet and that collective excitement that's just really hard to manufacture. And I mean if you look at 2008, singles day didn't exist yet even in China and Amazon also, you know, they, they started Prime Day from scratch. So there's no reason why 1111 can't reach the same magnitude here in the US but it'll take a couple of factors that come together and it'll probably take time. But we have no doubt that Singles Day is going to be huge here.
- [10:08]
A
Well, that's a, it's a really interesting point. Right. It's something that could happen, but it'll take a few factors. What do you see those factors being sky like how can we translate that Entertainment embedded ecosystem. We can't translate it all, but what can we do in the US to try and get a little piece of that pie?
- [10:26]
B
I think we do start to see more of it around the big shopping events and festivals. When you have the access to consumer attention versus how I think a lot of US consumers typically approach E commerce, which yes, is very different and in a lot of ways more limited than how Chinese consumers approach it, where they are looking to it for entertainment with a discovery oriented mindset. While American consumers, they tend to be a little more transactional when they are shopping online. They have something in mind. They go to their preferred retailer, website or app, they buy it, they're done, It's a few minutes. But now I think when we have these shopping events, that really creates the opportunity for deeper engagement because you have the attention, the interest in looking for deals and searching across, you know, maybe not just a retailer site like Amazon on Prime Day, but also going to social platforms like TikTok, shop, reading, going on Reddit, seeing what people are talking about, what they're recommending. That part of China is just so much more mature in terms of E commerce that there's really a much greater diversity of experiences. But I think shopping events and festivals can help tap into that in the US as well.
- [11:40]
A
Well, and it sound to me like if I'm reading between the lines, the US is very transactional based. But if we can find an emotional connection to 1111 or Singles Day and maybe talk about it being more like self gift, self reward, self indulgence, then perhaps that'll also take off in the same emotional way and momentum of FOMO that China has or is seeing the infrastructure is a little bit harder for us to fix.
- [12:09]
B
Yeah, but I think in the US also the timing works in Singles day favor because it's kind of positioned within what's already the holiday season, but it's not at the peak of the holiday season. So right now in the US we have like the October Sales that are kind of very early holiday season and not that many consumers are doing much of their actual holiday shopping during those sales. And then you have the big run up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday and then. And that kind of kicks off the peak holiday season. So there's this little bit of a lull or opportunity to capture consumer attention when they're already. But they already have holidays in mind.
- [12:48]
A
And it's probably much less stressful than Black Friday. It should be fun. Which makes me think, Chris, for AliExpress, you guys have some elements that are really not just about deals. And there are many things that you do for 1111 that go well beyond promotions. Can you tell us more about those?
- [13:06]
C
Yeah, absolutely. And it's a lot of. It was already little touched upon by, by sky. And I think that's really the whole point of Singles Day, that it is an event, it is not just deals. And we're trying to take a lot of these elements to our, to our global customers. Because in China it's, it's really, it's, it's a national holiday essentially. Right. And the experience is, is, is really what keeps people coming back. And not just the discounts, anybody can offer discounts, but if you create something truly magical around that period, that's what really changes behavior. And so for us, in taking the learnings from China and adapting it to a global context, we've really found that three elements are crucial in doing that. And the first is these live events and entertainment elements. Right. We Talked about the 2019 example with Taylor Swift. That really set the tone and kicked the kind of off the idea for what Singles Day can become globally. And so the first year that the team and I actually kicked off in 2023, the first thing that we did for, for Singles Day was host an amazing Singles Day concert in a really beautiful cast iron warehouse in soho. We had performers like Swae Lee, Slick Rick, Lil Kim, we built engagement mechanisms around. It was, it was really, really basically turned into a block party, which was, which was awesome. In 2024, we hosted the 1111 Festival in, in a huge concert venue in Madrid with 10 tens of thousands of people. The whole event was live Streamed exclusively on AliExpress. So, you know, we're kind of shifting it a little bit from a shopping event to an entertainment platform with commerce built into it. The second thing that's really important, what we've noticed is we really want to try to add value to the consumer experience beyond just the deals in the sense that we try to bring partners into the Mix and perks. So last singles day, for instance, we had PayPal as our partner. They offered instant discounts upon checkout when you chose PayPal to check out. We partnered with Tinder two years ago, which was obviously super tongue in cheek where essentially people in the New York area could match with AliExpress on Tinder for a chance to win tickets to, to the soho concert I just mentioned. Right. So that just creates such a, such a more interesting way of engaging with our brand. It's not just a banner ad. There's a true tangible benefit. The third thing is platform innovation. So we are obviously always working on really cool ways to improve the app experience. We have incredible AI capabilities that we're integrating more and more into into our shopping experience for our consumers. And so we usually use 1111 as a way to launch these features to, to our broader audience. Last year, like I said, we launched a super cool suite of AI features that mainly make make search and discovery easier. The year before that, we launched some great seller features for our local sellers that were increasingly onboarding in the US and in other global markets outside of China. But I think the coolest feature that, that I always love talking about around singles day is, is shaken when. Because that's kind of, basically that's where everything comes together. The roots of shaking win go back to Chinese shopping culture where, you know, shaking your phone to reveal secret prizes and perks is, is a very, very popular feature.
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A
I love this. And yeah, this is one of my favorite things.
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C
Have you tried it?
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A
No, but I'm waiting for the invitation to the secret party and to the ability to shake and win.
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C
Well, it's happening again, hopefully sometime soon. But essentially we started introducing Shake and Win during our sponsorship of the 2024 Euro cup, which we were a top level sponsor of. So what we did was we, we basically tied the Shake and Win mechanism to all tournaments. So during every match you were able to shake your phone when a goal was scored for a chance to win instant prizes like discounts, laptops, phones, even match tickets. We had David Beckham as our brand ambassador. So as you can imagine, the whole thing actually went really viral. It drove downloads like we've never seen before. It drove daily active users at an incredible clip. And you know, it just created this Pavlovian moment between, you know, there's a, there's a goal scored on the pitch and that then becomes a reason to open the app. And that was so successful that we're like, okay, well clearly we were able to prove that these gamification elements can be also applied to a global context. So we introduced it during double 11 and it absolutely landed the same way. So people had already learned that behavior from the Euros. It was familiar, it was, it felt super fun. And now it's become one of our signature mechanisms of our, of our 1111 festival. So from a business standpoint, it's one of the most powerful tools we have for driving downloads and daily engagement.
- [17:56]
A
Well, it's interesting because sky and I talk about retailtainment gamification. I mean, it's been one of our trends that's iterated over the last few years. Is this about singles day, sky, or is this just where retail is headed?
- [18:08]
B
I think it's headed there more broadly, but as I mentioned before, I think the events are shopping festivals, the tent poles. There are really great opportunities to launch these kinds of retail attainment initiatives or other innovations because you have the consumer engagement and willingness to spend more time on the app or looking for, you know, ways to connect deals with fun and discovery all in one place and kind of at one time. And they will be like multitasking or, you know, doing second screen shopping while they're watching TV or doing something else. So I think, I think that's why these events are especially important. And I'm always surprised by, you know, when, you know, like Amazon, it has like something like live and live streaming and it never really promoted it for its prime day sales in the same way that like Alibaba in China really used singles day to push live streaming and make it the place where you could get the best deals while also making it entertaining. I think 2019 was also the year that Kim Kardashian appeared on a, on a tmall or Taobao live stream with Via, who was at the time the most popular live streamer in China. And you know, she was, she was promoting her perfume and it was just that kind of experience where people are willing to tune in and also score a great deal.
- [19:40]
A
It's funny because now I've learned two things about singles day. It's not one day and I thought it was just about buying myself Lamborghinis, but it's not that. It's just about how do you bring me into an ecosystem that is fun and entertainment? And like you were saying, Chris, it's both content and commerce mixed together in such a seamless way that you don't even realize you're spending money. So with that then what should US brands be doing? How can they tap into 1111? I'm going to ask you both that question, Sky.
- [20:08]
B
So I think the self gifting opportunity is a really good one and that really taps into the origins of Singles Day as like a, the opportunity to celebrate being single or you know, buying for yourself as opposed to buying for others now in the US because of where it sits in the calendar with, with the holidays coming up, I think it's an opportunity for us consumers, especially younger ones, to get engaged as they might be looking to treat themselves during the holidays. You know, not just buying gifts for others or buying for themselves in a need based way like if you need an outfit for a holiday party, but really looking to celebrate themselves, care of themselves at a time when they're also gearing up for what can be a stressful experience. Young people, especially students, they have finals to look forward to right before the holidays as well in addition to all of the other holiday stressors, travel, family and so on.
- [21:08]
A
Chris, what do you think? How can brands here in the west tap into Singles Day? What do they need to do?
- [21:15]
C
Yeah, I think this is a huge opportunity moment. I mean if you look at there really only 20% of US consumers know about Singles Day right now, which is already a really good starting place. But it also means that it's, that it's a huge opportunity. Right. If you look at what Cyber Monday was back in 2005, it was literally started with a press release. Some, some folks over at NRF noticed that there was a, an interesting shopping pattern after Black Friday and they gave it a name and the brands that jumped on it early, they owned it and the ones that that it for it to feel safe or, or worth it or big enough, they had to catch up. So I think 1111 is at a similar point, similar inflection point right now where I think the best tip or the best thing to do right now is to just try it out. There's no perfect playbook, there's no right or wrong. Sky mentioned it. Right. It's, it's all about that self indulgence, self gifting. So I think if you're a brand, just pick a product or a category or just find an angle that, that kind of fits the self gifting narrative. Build an engagement mechanism, a simple one, something like a shake and win where you know, it's very, very intuitive and easy for people to catch on. Partner with some brands that, that your customers already love. That way you can drive more earned media and more hype around, around your activation. And I don't think it needs to be, it needs to be perfect right. I think now is the time to put a flag in the ground and capitalize on the moment, and it'll pay off in the future.
- [22:38]
A
I think that's a great place to leave it at.
- [22:40]
B
Right.
- [22:40]
A
You risk more by not engaging than by trying something that maybe just didn't work so well this time around.
- [22:46]
C
Exactly.
- [22:47]
A
Thank you, Chris.
- [22:48]
C
Thank you, Susie.
- [22:49]
A
And thanks, Sky.
- [22:50]
B
Thanks, Susie. It's great to be back.
- [22:51]
A
And thanks to our listeners and to our team that edits the podcast. Please leave a rating or review and remember to subscribe. I'll see you for more Reimagining retail next Wednesday. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of behind the Numbers. Can I do that one more time? Breathing is hard sometimes. No. I don't know if that's better or worse. I need breathing lessons.