No more midnight rush: How Singles’ Day is being rebuilt for China’s cautious consumers

SHANGHAI: Three models in wool coats stand before a wall of glass bricks as a cinema camera rolls past.

Behind a partition, operators in headsets monitor a bank of screens.

Nearly 400,000 people are watching the livestream by Chinese fashion brand CHICJOC on online shopping platform Taobao.

One viewer asks to see the grey outerwear. Another wants to know what to pair with an oatmeal coat. In the corner of the screen, a coat is listed for 3,499.99 yuan (US$526).

For CHICJOC co-founder Wei Yujing, 36, the carefully choreographed livestream is a far cry from the frantic sales race that once defined Singles’ Day.

Back in 2017 or 2018, orders opened as Nov 11 began, she recalled, with Taobao ranking brands by sales for all to see.

“It felt like the Olympic Games, with every brand starting from the same line on that one day,” she told CNA. “All the brands were like racehorses.”

“I remember some shops crossed 10 million yuan within an hour, or within a day,” she said.

Launched in 2009 by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which operates Taobao, Singles’ Day has grown into the world’s biggest online shopping festival.

Known in China as “shuang shi yi”, or Double 11, the festival takes its name from Nov 11 (11/11), whose four ones symbolise singlehood.

But 18 editions on, the shopping bonanza looks markedly different. What was once a 24-hour sales frenzy has stretched into weeks-long promotions and new ways of courting increasingly cautious consumers.

The scale remains enormous. Sales across platforms reached 1.695 trillion yuan last year during the Oct 7 to Nov 11 promotional period, up 14.2 per cent year-on-year, according to data provider Syntun.

But that growth was roughly half the 26.6 per cent recorded in 2024.

FROM MAD DASH TO SLOW BURN

The midnight rush that once defined Singles’ Day has largely been left behind.

Alibaba began making the shift in 2021, moving the start of its presales to 8pm. By 2022, its main sales windows were also opening at that hour.

The platform has also simplified its discounts, replacing complex cross-store coupons - such as spending 300 yuan to save 50 yuan across multiple shops - with straightforward discounts of 15 per cent.

Rival e-commerce giant JD.com scrapped its presale model in 2023 - shoppers previously paid deposits weeks in advance and settled the balance when sales opened; it now sells goods in stock outright.

The changes are a deliberate move away from the artificial urgency of the midnight launch, said Jason Yu, managing director at Beijing-based CTR Market Research.

“Now it all has moved to 8 o’clock in the evening so that everybody is all relaxed (and) sitting on the sofa.”

The platforms had been criticised over the pressure and complicated promotional rules, Yu noted.

“Now they want to create a more hassle-free and easy environment for consumers.”

The shift extends to livestream selling, where aggressive pitches are also losing their appeal.

“Early livestreams were mostly hard-sell, hawking-style selling. Someone in the livestream room shouts, ‘3, 2, 1! Last batch, 9.9 yuan with free shipping, if you don’t buy today it’s gone tomorrow!’” Liu Manting, a brand marketing manager at Taobao Fashion, the platform’s apparel business unit, told CNA.

“Consumers are actually really tired of that.”

For Zhang Ya, a 29-year-old pottery teacher in Shanghai, the appeal of chasing discounts has faded.

“The coupons in recent years have become too complicated,” she told CNA.

“Then you buy and stockpile a whole pile of stuff that takes ages to use up ... You might as well buy things whenever you need them. The price isn’t really that different anyway.”

“There’s no real atmosphere now,” Zhang said, recalling the televised Tmall gala that once accompanied Singles’ Day. Tmall is Alibaba’s business-to-consumer marketplace and sister platform to Taobao.

“People’s enthusiasm has faded a bit compared with before.”

Her preparation this year is limited to topping up a membership that makes returns easier.

But not everyone has lost interest.

Cao, a 22-year-old intern hoping to snag a discount on a computer, still finds the deals “pretty worthwhile”.

The shopping calendar has also stretched considerably, with campaigns now opening shortly after China's National Day holiday in early October and running for more than a month.

Alibaba and Douyin opened their campaigns on Oct 15, almost a month before Nov 11. JD.com launched its campaign on Oct 12, while short video platform Kuaishou and lifestyle app Xiaohongshu kicked theirs off on Oct 7 and Oct 10 respectively.

CTR’s Yu described the increasingly extended campaigns as an “arms race amongst all the different platforms”.

Fang Jun, 34, a Shanghai livestreamer who goes by Junjun on camera, has watched the single-day sales spike flatten out over the past six years.

“It used to be a big spike, with purchases concentrated on Double 11 and Double 12,” she told CNA, referring to another shopping event on Dec 12.

“Now it’s more like a small bump, a bit higher than usual but not by much.”

Yet even a smaller bump can pay off for merchants.

On a normal day, her company might spend 1 million yuan on advertising to make 2 million in sales, Fang said.

During the big promotions, free traffic from the platforms can cut that spend to about 300,000 yuan.

SPENDING WITH RESERVATIONS

Fang has seen the shift towards more cautious spending from both sides of the camera.

Before becoming a livestreamer, she worked in tourism and owned more than 20 luxury handbags.

“In the past year or two I haven’t bought a single designer bag,” she said.

“Back then people were conscious of money, but it was about how to live better,” she said.

“Now even people I know who earn tens of millions of yuan can’t bring themselves to spend. A lot of people around me now say: ‘Spend on what you must, and don’t spend a cent on anything else.’”

Consumers coming on to the livestreams have moved the same way too, she said. A few years ago, her company’s 300-yuan gift sets sold briskly.

But during this year’s mid-year shopping festival, known as 618, they struggled to find buyers.

“Items at 90-something yuan or less, even 40 or 50 yuan, sold very well instead,” she said.

Chinese shoppers are “becoming more cautious and pragmatic”, said CTR’s Yu.

“They look … more for substance and the real value that (they) extract from purchases,” he said, attributing the shift partly to pressure on household finances.

Shopping habits are also changing.

Rather than stocking up during major sales events, consumers are increasingly buying smaller quantities as needed, aided by instant retail services that can deliver orders within the hour, Yu added.

Some spending is also shifting away from physical goods towards experiences such as travel, concerts, football and outdoor activities.

Meanwhile, government subsidies continue to support purchases of big-ticket items.

In late September, China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, said it had released the fourth and final 62.5 billion yuan tranche of this year’s 250 billion yuan consumer trade-in subsidy programme, which covers products including home appliances and computers.

The programme has become part of the Singles' Day shopping landscape, Yu noted.

Home appliances were the largest product category at last year’s Singles’ Day campaign, accounting for 266.8 billion yuan in sales, according to Syntun.

But the search for value is not simply about spending less - it is also changing what consumers are willing to pay for.

At one end sits “dupe” culture - the hunt for cheaper alternatives to branded products.

Taobao is catering to such shoppers by connecting them with factory-direct sellers and merchants from industrial clusters, said Liu from Taobao Fashion.

At the other end of the market are brands such as CHICJOC.

Its customers are willing to pay a premium for products they believe will last, said co-founder Wei.
The brand does not offer discounts and raises prices on some of its classic pieces each year, much like luxury brands.

“And customers accept it,” she said.

Wei said her customers viewed a coat as an investment they could wear for a decade, and paid close attention to prices.

“If we adjust any price even slightly, they’ll find out ... Our customers even know our prices and the tiny differences better than our staff do.”

BEYOND THE BARGAIN

For platforms and brands, winning over China's increasingly selective shoppers now requires more than offering the biggest discounts.

At a sprawling studio about an hour’s drive from central Shanghai, Taobao is experimenting with a different approach to livestream selling.

CHICJOC’s fashion showcase is part of the platform’s Super Live initiative, which stages professionally produced shows to highlight brands and their products.

According to Alibaba, the format swaps the standard phone setup for cinematic cameras and couture-level runway production, weaves backstage design stories into the stream, and runs on a “see-now-buy-now” model - viewers can order what is on the catwalk as it appears.

Taobao has staged more than 100 such runway shows over the past three years, with every participating brand achieving its highest-ever single-day sales on the day of its show, said Liu from Taobao Fashion.

The strategy is also shifting purchases away from Nov 11 itself towards brands’ own promotional events.

CHICJOC’s VIP customers, for instance, tend to shop around the brand’s livestream events rather than wait for Singles’ Day, Liu said.

The brand’s two-day event in late October generated more than 61 million yuan in store sales, a peak so far this year, according to the company. Orders for one alpaca coat alone exceeded 10 million yuan.

Jacob Cooke, CEO of China-based e-commerce firm WPIC Marketing + Technologies, said Singles’ Day has moved away from being a “clearance event” towards engaging customers and launching new products.

For prestige brands, heavy discounts on signature products “can hurt brand equity”, he said, adding that using the festival’s traffic to launch something new is the smarter play.

Technology is also changing how shoppers discover and buy products.

This is the first Singles' Day where shoppers can use an artificial intelligence chatbot to search for and compare products, place orders, track deliveries and handle after-sales requests, without navigating the usual shopping pages.

In May, Alibaba connected its Qwen AI model to its catalogue of more than 4 billion products. Rivals JD.com and Douyin have also folded in their own assistants, Dongdong and Doubao.

Internal data from WPIC Marketing + Technologies for October shows AI already driving roughly 5 per cent of purchases through links embedded in chatbots.

AI has reached the livestream floor too. Some merchants on Taobao now use virtual hosts for overnight sessions, Liu from Taobao Fashion said, although they remain “more of a supporting tool”.

In apparel, she said, “people still mainly want to see how clothes look on a real person”.

The human faces behind livestreams are changing as well.

Brands are moving away from relying heavily on influencers towards regular livestreams hosted by their own employees within stores, where shoppers can browse products and make purchases at their own pace, said CTR’s Yu.

While the biggest influencers still generate “phenomenal” sales figures, their sway has waned considerably compared with previous years, he said.

For Shanghai livestreamer Fang, keeping viewers engaged now takes more than an aggressive sales pitch.

On a recent evening, she demonstrated a skincare product on camera, dabbing serum onto her cheek as she told viewers that the day's promotional bundle would disappear once the broadcast ended.

Pushing too hard risks putting shoppers off, she said. Instead, Fang tries to build rapport, greeting returning viewers with a casual “Hey sis, you're here!” before turning to the products.

“Good hosts sell themselves first,” she said. “If they haven't watched you yet, how would they even know about your product?”

While the frenetic pace of Singles’ Day has slowed somewhat, Cooke from WPIC Marketing + Technologies cautioned against concluding that the shopping extravaganza is in decline.

While the frenetic pace of Singles’ Day has slowed somewhat, Cooke from WPIC Marketing +

Technologies cautioned against concluding that the shopping extravaganza is in decline.

“More modest growth rates should be read as normal as China’s consumer market matures,” he said, noting that even single-digit growth is celebrated during Black Friday, the major annual shopping event in the United States that follows Thanksgiving.

He maintained that Singles' Day remains a useful barometer of consumer confidence, with continued spending growth pointing to shoppers who are cautious but resilient.

Olivia Plotnick, founder of Shanghai-based social media marketing agency Wai Social, was less convinced.

“I would not treat Double 11 as a meaningful barometer of Chinese consumer confidence,” she said.

“With the promotion period still being extended, year-on-year comparisons are hard to make.”

Fang, meanwhile, will continue spending four to five hours a day in front of the camera, persuading viewers that today’s offer is worth taking.

Despite the changes, the festival still holds a special place in her working calendar.

Asked what Singles’ Day feels like to her these days, she had a simple answer.

“Like Chinese New Year.”

The bustle, the anticipation, the biggest payday of the year. Hers falls in November.

Source: CNA/xy(ws)