China’s Singles’ Day Sales Festival Expands to 5 Weeks

China’s Singles’ Day sales festival has reportedly been stretched to as long as five weeks by some retailers.

While the sales event is set for Nov. 11, which is the original Singles’ Day, JD.com and Douyin began their campaigns on Oct. 9 and Alibaba began its program Wednesday (Oct. 15), Reuters reported Thursday (Oct. 16).

Retailers have launched their Singles’ Day promotions earlier in an effort to boost sales at a time when the Chinese economy has been challenged by a property crisis, extreme weather, fierce competition and new U.S. tariffs, according to the report.

During China’s eight-day Golden Week holiday, which ended Oct. 8, spending dropped to a three-year low, per the report.

PYMNTS reported in 2021 that Singles’ Day began in the 1990s as an anti-Valentine’s Day and became a sales event in 2019 when Alibaba launched the first Singles’ Day Shopping Festival.

The promotion became the biggest global shopping event of the year, with nearly every global eCommerce company getting in on the action, and it expanded from a single day to a series of days.

In 2021, many sales began on Oct. 31.

This year, it was reported on Oct. 15 that Honor, which makes an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered phone that finds discounts, launched that device weeks before Singles’ Day to showcase how AI can make online shopping faster and more personalized.

Honor also partnered with Alibaba to integrate its new tools into Taobao and Tmall, embedding its AI deeper into China’s retail infrastructure.

Alibaba said in a Thursday press release that this year’s Singles’ Day will mark the company’s first large-scale deployment of generative AI in eCommerce, as Taobao and Tmall are using the technology to enrich and index their product catalog and enhance their search and recommendation engines.

“This year marks the first of many future 11.11s with generative AI deployment at scale,” Kaifu Zhang, vice president of Alibaba Group, said in the release.

JD.com said in a Tuesday (Oct. 14) press release that it saw an “exceptional start” to this year’s Singles’ Day promotion, with the number of active users of its app increasing by 47.6% year over year.

“Since the campaign officially kicked off on Oct. 9, consumer enthusiasm has continued to soar, fueled by JD.com’s ready-to-ship inventory and direct price reductions,” the company said in the release.