If you’ve been selling online for more than a minute or two, you’ll likely be bracing yourself for the Cyber Week onslaught. Kicking off on the eve of the US Thanksgiving long weekend, this annual opportunity for bargain conscious buyers to spend up a storm is well entrenched on the retail calendar.
But there’s another online event you may not be aware of, and it can be every bit as large and lucrative for retailers.
Singles’ Day is an unofficial holiday that originated at China’s Nanjing University in 1993. An occasion for the unattached to treat themselves, it is celebrated on 11 November – the eleventh day of the eleventh month – courtesy of the fact the Chinese character for a single person closely resembles the numeral one.
The event was commercialised by Alibaba in 2009, after the Chinese ecommerce and retail giant clocked the opportunity to generate sales by promoting a local alternative to Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Fast forward 15 years and Singles Day has surpassed both these household name events, size-wise. Celebrated by shoppers across Southeast Asia as well as mainland China, it’s believed to be the largest physical and online retail sales event in the world, with sales in 2023 in excess of US $156 billion, compared with Cyber Monday’s US $12.4 billion.
Scoring additional sales in the run-up to Christmas
For local retailers with an appealing range and keen prices, snagging even a small slice of the Singles Day spend can give final quarter sales figures an additional boost.
With our dollar in the doldrums, Australian goods can be a relative bargain for well-heeled Chinese buyers.
Develop a localised online marketing campaign or two, confirm your fulfilment function has capacity and check you’ve plenty of stock at hand and you’re almost ready to start sending out Singles Day orders.
Almost, but not quite.
Getting on top of international compliance complexity
In addition to getting your online shop stocked and ready to sell up a storm on 11 November, there’s one other vital piece of preparation you’ll need to complete: registering your business correctly in the overseas jurisdictions where you hope to score sales.
Members of the Chinese diaspora are scattered across the globe and, unless you’re seeking to restrict sales to a single territory, you’ll need to ensure you’re compliant with the tariff and tax regulations in all the places they call home.
If you plan on doing this paperwork manually, you’re looking at many hours and days of filling out forms and getting the approvals you need in place.
Unless you’ve an army of admin staff on standby, that’s likely to be time you just don’t have.
Partnering with a tax technology vendor that supports sellers across the globe
Deploying automated tax compliance technology is the surest way to manage this complexity and get your operations ready to start selling in multiple overseas jurisdictions quickly, while ensuring you don’t fall foul of tax authorities beyond our shores.
It’s important to underscore that country-by-country tax and trade rules are complex, and in a number of countries especially so for sellers without a local presence. Ideally, you’ll choose an AI-powered platform that simplifies and streamlines all the tasks associated with tax compliance and global commerce, including registration, licensing, calculation, returns, document management, reporting, e-invoicing and cross border compliance.
Once it’s up and running in your back office, you’ll be able to automate the calculation of a wide range of taxes in real time, including sales tax in countries across the globe.
Making the most of another end-of-year export opportunity
While it’s yet to achieve the recognition Cyber Week enjoys, Singles Day is one of the largest events on the global retail calendar. It can be an excellent opportunity for on-the-ball Aussie retailers to boost their turnover and profits by making some incremental sales in the run-up to the festive season.
Investing in AI-powered tax compliance software will ensure you don’t come a cropper on the compliance front in the process. If taking part in a sales event that attracts the eyeballs of tens of millions of Chinese buyers each year appeals to you, now’s the time to get your back office in order.
Chris Calverley is Head of Sales and Partnerships – ANZ at Avalara.