The next step for the middle class to be budget-conscious: Super Double 11

Muhe Business Finance

2026.11.11 14:55

· From Beijing

Full text 5031 words

Text | Muhe Business Finance, author I Gong Zheng, editor I Yang Jing

In the fall of 2009, in a large conference room at Alibaba headquarters, there were several tables of snacks and drinks, dozens of media, and a brief opening ceremony.

There was no big screen, and there were no scrolling transaction figures later. At that time, Taobao Mall, the predecessor of Tmall, had just completed its brand upgrade.

Zhang Yong, then the head of Taobao Mall, later recalled that the original intention of doing Double 11 was very simple, which was to "survive". As for why he chose November 11, his original words in an interview with the media were, "I have to do something in November to increase the transaction volume."

At that time, there was Black Friday in the United States, and Chinese e-commerce merchants also believed that they should have their own shopping festival. November happened to be sandwiched between National Day and Christmas, which was a blank period for consumption. Later, the team told him that today was Singles' Day on the university campus. Zhang Yong thought it was great, "Singles are very lonely and they have to express their feelings online."

Over the past 16 years, more and more people are single. The difference is that many people are no longer addicted to buying and selling to vent their loneliness, but are in harmony with loneliness. They began to stop hoarding toilet paper, buying a lot of useless things through discounts, and instead bought spelled beans, pulp boards, "no banana greens", incense and health care, and paid more attention to their own emotional supply and tangible and tangible happiness.

Double 11 has witnessed the intergenerational changes in consumption of several generations of Chinese people. The most important thing is that the "money in your pocket" that supports Double Eleven has really gone from small to large, and has finally stopped increasing.

From squandering money to digging around

In the fall of 2009, Zhang Yong personally came to Lingzhi Fashion and hoped that they would participate in a promotion event to be held on November 11.

Lingzhi Fashion Group originated from Denmark and owns brands such as Jack Jones, ONLY, VERO MODA, and SELECTED.

At that time, Double Eleven was still in eggshells and did not have any popularity. Gina, the vice president of Lingzhi Fashion at the time, later recalled in an interview with China Economic Weekly: "The boss of Taobao Mall personally invited us, so we readily accepted it and wanted to give it a try."

According to the weekly report, less than two months had passed since Jack Jones registered its flagship store on Taobao Mall. On September 24, 2009, the store went online with only three people in the operation team: a person in charge, a store manager, and an editor.

Lingzhi Fashion did not take this event seriously. Everyone got off work on time on Double 11 and no one was arranged to work overtime.

At that time, the daily sales of Lingzhi Fashion's Taobao store were around 50,000 to 80,000 yuan. "We thought it was just a promotional activity, which would probably increase the daily sales by four or five times," the person in charge said.

As a result, on November 11, Lingzhi’s store was sold out. At two o'clock in the morning, the team operations leader was woken up by a call from Taobao's waiter: "Many products in your store have been sold out and taken off the shelves. Can you restock?"

That day, Jack Jones sold more than 5.5 million yuan in a single store.

A total of 27 brands participated in the first Double 11. Jack & Jones’s RMB 5.5 million accounted for 10% of the total sales of RMB 50 million, which was equivalent to the brand’s sales in the Chinese market for two months at that time. The whole Lingzhi was shocked.

Jack Jones has become a positive case in which “Double 11” can continue. Other merchants who did not participate, or declined, originally did not believe that a "Singles' Day" could sell anything. Taobao does not expect to make money from this. Its more important task is to cultivate a habit among consumers and an ecosystem within the site. No ponds have been built, so fish cannot be raised and sold.

By 2012, three years after the first Double 11, Taobao’s Double 11 transaction volume reached 19.1 billion yuan. Behind the numbers, China's retail business has also ushered in a major change: e-commerce sales in a single day exceeded offline sales for the first time.

On this Double Eleven, Quanyou Home Furnishing Co., Ltd., which is headquartered in Chongzhou Economic Development Zone, Chengdu, achieved a single-day transaction volume of over 100 million yuan and more than 30,000 transactions, making it one of the top three sales on Tmall that day. The gold content behind this data is not low.

Home furnishing is a category that relies heavily on offline experience. There is a sofa to sit on, a mattress to lie on, and a cabinet to knock on. In 2012, no one believed that a home furnishing brand could sell hundreds of millions a day in the virtual space.

But Quanyou did it. Other competitors - Gujia Home Furnishing's sales on the same day were 60.39 million, Lin's Wood Industry was 58.81 million, and Qumei was 23 million, all of which were not as good as it. Of course there was an episode at that time. Both Quanyou and Gujia Home Furnishing Co., Ltd. are arguing that their sales volume ranks first in the furniture category. Looking at the current consumption outlook, it feels a bit like a "child's anger". Modern consumers pay more attention to "mind". Everyone may think, "The sales volume is No. 1, but the quality is better than the popular ones?"

Luolai Home Textiles is another example. On Double 11 in 2012, Luolai Home Textiles’ single store sales exceeded 50 million, ranking first in the home textile category. Home textiles, like home furnishings, are also a category with a strong sense of offline experience. You need to touch them to know the feel of the sheets and the thickness of the quilt. As a result, the public chose directly on Tmall with their eyes closed.

Behind the huge profits made by these brand merchants is the social consumption sentiment that is increasing year by year. Without the public's "favor", Double 11 will not make big waves. That year, GDP growth reached 7.8% year-on-year, real estate hit a new high at the end of the year, and the public was embracing an era in which "buy a house today and get rich tomorrow."

In Hangzhou, where Alibaba is headquartered, the Double 11 advertisements at bus stops were the best way to attract fans and fans back then. They are not like the "unfeeling" people see now.

Picture | Now that I see these advertisements, I guess everyone has no idea.

Some shopkeepers complained that "the usual price has already dropped to the bottom, and they still have to raise the price. The only way is to let the price go up and then discount it in half. But consumers don't care. White-collar workers, college students, and young people feel that they have a bright future, and they are also willing to take advantage of it. They think that they are "making up for the full reduction", and they are very happy to overdraw a little of today's old capital to exchange for a shirt in the workplace tomorrow. According to today's point of view, it was an economic upturn, and the air was filled with optimism.

This craze lasted until 2021, when Tmall GMV reached its peak, but just like the law of yin and yang that must be balanced, behind the prosperity, more and more cracks are appearing in the corners: using tomorrow's money to subsidize today, which makes it increasingly difficult for some merchants to make money. Traffic fees, promotion fees, discount costs, return rates, after a big promotion, everyone is confused: the excitement is the platform, and it is increasingly unclear whether they make money or not.

The turning point occurs in 2022. The GMV growth rate of Tmall and JD.com during Double 11 began to slow down. More importantly, that year, for the first time, the leading platforms collectively and tacitly agreed not to announce specific transaction amounts. There are no large-screen scrolling numbers and no real-time battle reports. Instead, there are unsexy and vague expressions such as "doubled brand growth" and "increased number of users", which really makes people feel lonely.

By 2025, Tmall even canceled its media open day, and battle reports were completely absent. The platform has its own high-sounding rhetoric, but at the same time everyone understands: The era in which a digital game can ignite the consumer sentiment of the whole people is over.

The transformation of the economic environment, the maturation of consumer psychology, and the shift of the platform ecology from incremental competition to stock game. The three forces acting at the same time have made the Double 11 "scoreboard" lose its role as the MARK of the times.

Picture | This kind of exaggerated battle report has also become the Yellow Pages of history.

Big changes in consumption

Double 11 has been given a lot of meaning by marketing giants. Singles' Day and Singles' Day are packaged as a fashionable lifestyle and shrouded in a sacred halo. But its essence is a free gift brought to society by the upward movement of the economy.

Businessmen are willing to cut some meat and exchange tomorrow's growth for today's bleeding. Consumers are willing to spend a little savings and use their expected income tomorrow to pay for today's indulgence. The common will of both supply and demand parties has enabled the platform to match business and jointly created the Double 11 miracle.

The consumer goods that benefited most from Double Eleven during the economic upturn were clothing and mobile phones.

Lei Jun’s rise may be attributed to Jack Ma’s help. During Double Eleven in 2012, Xiaomi had not yet become the single-store champion. But by 2013, Xiaomi's official flagship store ranked first among Tmall single stores with a turnover of 553 million yuan, becoming the first merchant to achieve a single store sales of over 100 million yuan. In 2014, Xiaomi sold 1.16 million mobile phones on Tmall, with sales reaching 1.56 billion yuan, accounting for approximately 3% of Tmall's total sales on that day, and successfully defended its title of No. 1 single store.

You know, Xiaomi’s offline store business started in 2015. It was only raised as a strategic project in 2017. Without Jack Ma’s Yunshang Mall, Lei Jun might not have developed so fast.

Picture | A photo of the couple circulating on the Internet

In the field of clothing, the sudden rise of three trendy women's clothing brands - Inman, Handu Yishe and Artka - made by Taobao has made the public realize that Tmall also has the ability to "make stars". You know, in the era of pedestrian streets, the three "big three" of ladylike styles that ruled the streets were Aileen, Lady House, and Daphne.

The only case where Jack Ma may also need to thank the merchants is Japan's richest man Tadashi Yanai.

Why should we thank each other? Because before, Tmall was more about achieving others, and Uniqlo, as an international brand with developed offline brands, its attachment to Alibaba was limited at first, and even wary. But it finally chose to join. It used cost-effective quality to raise the overall water level of Tmall clothing, and also protected its own interests by keeping prices consistent online and offline. Without this comprehensive strength, Alibaba and JD.com would not have fought a "choose one" war for Uniqlo back then.

At the same time, Uniqlo should also thank Alibaba. Without education and promotion through online channels, thermal underwear, polar fleece, and light down would not have been able to become popular items that lasted for ten years. From 2015 to 2019, Uniqlo’s Tmall store has ranked first in women’s clothing sales for five consecutive years.

However, the same truth remains. The reason why these brands were bought by consumers was because everyone had money in their pockets at that time. But when economic challenges intensify and the consumer industry enters a recession cycle, this logic begins to change. The first thing to be cut off is precisely the consumption of "buying for cheap". The middle class no longer hoards more paper towels than can be used in three years, and no longer buys a bunch of unnecessary things in order to get enough discounts.

The consumption logic of the middle class has shifted from "cheap" to "worthwhile". It’s not that you don’t open your wallet, it’s that you only buy things that really make you happy. As a result, the emotional economy, health economy, pet economy, and outdoor economy began to rise.

A number of new consumer goods have begun to enter Chinese people’s lives. Subcategories such as tennis trainers, snowboards, mountaineering shoes, and jackets have experienced amazing growth on Taobao. They don’t offer “a good deal,” but “comfort” or “experience.” When the economy is good, people buy luxury goods to show off. When the economy is tight, people buy their favorite "private brands" to make themselves happy inwardly.

The conclusion behind this is simple but powerful: what kind of economic foundation there is, there will be what kind of consumption.

Double 11 during the rising period is a kind of performance art, a centralized carnival, because it requires a sense of ritual to release the pent-up desire to buy, and it also needs a time node to create a sense of urgency of "if you don't buy, you will lose." The challenging period gave rise to scattered, fragmented consumption behaviors aimed at self-soothing. Double 11 is still here, but it is no longer the "master switch" for consumption, but just one of many ordinary promotion days.

Picture | "Don't be banana-green", it looks really banana-green when raised

AI has also become a consumer product

On Double Eleven in 2026, AI squeezed into the consumption narrative in a novel way.

In the past two years, AI was still the marketing hub that merchants tried in the background.

What people know better is that during last year’s Double 11, Taobao’s “AI Universal Search” solved nearly 50 million consumer needs during Double 11, and its “AI List” generated about 2 million customized shopping lists.

Some merchants have also developed or customized AI digital employees to perform store operations, marketing planning, and customer service reception, which has produced an initial cost reduction and efficiency increase.

But this year, AI has moved from behind the scenes to the front, and has begun to appear on e-commerce platforms as a brand-new consumer product.

On the evening of November 2, Li Jiaqi began selling Qianwen Office personal membership monthly cards in the live broadcast room. Nearly 100,000 copies were sold within half an hour of the sale, with a total of approximately 2 trillion Tokens. Li Jiaqi basically doesn't show up anymore, but for such major nodes and major innovative products, he still needs to take a historical position.

Picture | Li Jiaqi and Chen Yusen, the head of Qianwen’s office, created a token selling show

The general consensus in the industry is that in terms of sales, this is more of a symbolic ceremony. What it symbolizes is that computing power has appeared on the shelves of leading anchors for the first time in the form of consumer goods. Although for most people, there is no need to stock up on it. Moreover, the Tokens of different manufacturers are not interoperable and have a limited range of use. If you stock up too much, it is estimated that there will be a risk of depreciation in a few months, just like the Meituan takeout coupons you hoard in your hand, but it still created a kind of "AI fashion".

After this, can we directly sell Agent on Tmall in the future? The money-making agent, the finance and taxation agent, the lulling agent are all exciting.

At the moment, what consumers are most concerned about is whether there will be a price comparison agent like Muse in the future, which will help users mark prices in real time 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without having to wait for Double Eleven. The platform will no longer shout "grabbing starts at zero o'clock", and consumers will no longer set alarm clocks. With the support of AI, shopping will become smarter, and some merchants who raise prices before the holiday will have nowhere to hide.

Looking back on the 17 years of Double Eleven, rather than saying that it has declined year by year, it is better to say that it has completed its historical mission - it has used a large-screen number to release a generation's confidence in the future. Now it retreats behind the scenes, returns consumption to daily life, and returns festivals to specific people.

The real color of Double Eleven may be that it “has no color in itself”. This is the healthy new normal of consumption.

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