British Icons Cash in on China’s Day of Sales Madness

The world’s largest online shopping day got off to a strong start in China this November 11, a date with digits that symbolize being single. In a variation on Valentine’s Day, single Chinese shoppers buy themselves gifts. “The ‘anti-Valentine’s Day’ celebration was first known as Bachelors’ Day,” reports People’s Daily Online. “After the initial joke gift- buying day in 1993 at China’s Nanjing University, word spread and other colleges joined in.” Most goods come from Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that hosts an online shopping festival for the holiday. In the festival’s first seven minutes, Chinese consumers spent almost US$1.5 billion. Expenditures in 2015 were tenfold those of the favorite US online shopping day known as Cyber Monday. Singles Day lifts the British economy, too, because British culture has high cachet in China. Indeed, celebrities like David and Victoria Beckham encourage singles to “spend, spend, spend,” notes the article. Additionally, “more than 130m people used the sales app,” reflecting a trend across much of the developing world in which the cellphone dominates more traditional technology like landlines and desktops. – YaleGlobal