HONG KONG/BEIJING (SCMP): Alibaba Group Holding is gearing up for its annual Singles’ Day shopping festival on major online marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, with the company expecting a record one million global brands to take part this year.
Pre-sales for the event open on Thursday, followed by the formal sale next Tuesday. The company projects more than 70 million products to feature, also a record for the festival.
Created by Alibaba in 2009, Singles’ Day has grown into the world’s largest online shopping festival. Also known as Double 11, it tapped into a trend among young single people to buy gifts for themselves on November 11, a date chosen for its four ones.
What began as a one-day sale has since turned into a huge weeks-long promotion spanning multiple platforms and is seen as an important barometer of domestic consumption in China.
Alibaba said it was combining discounts and coupons that could lead to savings of up to 28 per cent in some cases. It is also giving out tens of billions of yuan worth of coupons specifically designed for its 88VIP membership programme, its highest-spending consumer group, which had about 64 million members as of June.
This year’s event will feature deeper integration of the company’s flagship artificial intelligence model, Qwen, across its e-commerce ecosystem. A Qwen-powered shopping assistant launched in May helps users compare products, virtually try on clothing and select promotional offers, according to the company.
The launch followed the company’s first large-scale deployment of generative AI on Taobao and Tmall during the same event in 2025, when it integrated large language models into core search and recommendation engines.
Another trend this year is the increasing presence of overseas brands, with 60,000 new merchants joining the event for the first time.
US tech giant Apple is among the marquee participants and is set to begin accepting pre-orders for its latest foldable device, the iPhone Duo, on Tmall on Friday. Alibaba said the new iPhone 18 Pro series would be eligible for a 300 yuan (US$44.82) “surprise coupon” from October 20.
One of the newcomers is US yoga apparel brand Alo, which opened its first online store in China on Tmall in August.
Separately, Taobao announced a comprehensive upgrade to its official international logistics system as it seeks to navigate geopolitical and tariff uncertainties while expanding overseas.
Leveraging a network of more than 600 partners in more than 200 countries and regions, the e-commerce platform plans to speed up cross-border delivery times to as little as one day and replace consolidated shipping with direct delivery.
Taobao also pledged that overseas customers using its official logistics services would not face hidden fees and fluctuating surcharges, though tariffs could change and other issues could arise during shipping.
“Costs may fluctuate during the process, but the platform will absorb those fluctuations,” said Phil Ding Hongwei, vice-president of Alibaba and head of logistics at Taobao Tmall World, at a briefing on Thursday in Hong Kong.
Despite persistent trade tensions, Taobao said it would continue to embrace globalisation as a core strategy. The logistics upgrade was expected to cover all major markets spanning from Singapore to Canada, according to Ye Tian, general manager of Taobao Tmall World.
Meanwhile, rival JD.com already kicked off its Singles’ Day promotions on Monday. The company said on Thursday that the number of buyers on the first day saw double-digit growth from a year earlier.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
