Bol.com introduces Chinese Singles' Day to Netherlands

Bol.com too has set its sights on Singles’ Day on 11 November, the absolute heyday of retail sales, as a novel opportunity to boost its own pre-holiday sales. Last year, Chinese consumers spent over sixteen billion euros on this day on Alibaba alone.

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Bol.com is marketing Singles’ Day as the perfect moment to treat yourself to long dreamt-of objects: it is to become a day during which me, myself and I are on the forefront of everyone’s mind, according to Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant. This move marks the very first time that a major Benelux player joins in on the Singles’ Day fray. The holiday is even still a relative novelty in China as well, with popularity only rising through Alibaba’s support of the new holiday since 2009.

Bol.com has decided to promote Singles’ Day in The Netherlands only, as 11 November in Belgium is Armistice Day. “Should our Belgian customers express an interest in adding Singles’ Day to the calendar, then we may consider putting up a Belgian campaign as well next year. It goes without saying that the deals offered by bol.com during this time are also open to our customers in Belgium this year. In Belgium those sales go by the name of “Straffe deals”, a special brand of lucrative offers,” the Dutch webshop states.

Whether this recent addition to the calendar of commercial holidays will have any success remains to be seen, of course: despite heavy promotion, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not yet the unparalleled success stories they are in the United States. According to marketing professor Kitty Koelemeijer van Nyenrode, bol.com does have one important advantage over its competitors in promoting Singles’ Day: it is set weeks before any other sales take place and the customer can spend each euro only once.