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

Eighteen editions on, China’s biggest annual shopping festival is growing up. As the sales frenzy gives way to longer promotions and more cautious spending, brands and platforms are rethinking how to win over shoppers.

Taobao Singles' Day advertisements spotted at Nanjing West metro station in Shanghai, China, on Nov 1, 2026. (Photo: CNA/Tan Wen Lin)

Bong Xin Ying 07 Nov 2026 06:00AM (Updated: 07 Nov 2026 07:26AM) Bookmark Bookmark Share WhatsApp Telegram Facebook Twitter Email LinkedIn Set CNA as your preferred source on Google Add CNA as a trusted source to help Google better understand and surface our content in search results. Read a summary of this article on FAST. Get bite-sized news via a newcards interface. Give it a try. Click here to return to FAST Tap here to return to FAST FAST SHANGHAI: Three models in wool coats stand before a wall of glass bricks as a cinema camera rolls past.

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).

CNA Games Guess Word Crack the word, one row at a time Buzzword Create words using the given letters Mini Sudoku Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser Mini Crossword Small grid, big challenge Word Search Spot as many words as you can Show More Show Less Taobao's Super Live backstage operations for Chinese brand CHICJOC, during a livestream on Oct 25, 2026. (Photo: CNA/Tan Wen Lin) 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.