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News BY Ade Akin | November 11, 2026

U.S. Brands Are Taking Notice of Singles’ Day

November 11 is Veterans Day in the U.S., but some American brands are also marking the date as Singles’ Day, an unofficial Chinese shopping holiday that now generates more sales than Black Friday and Amazon Prime Day, Forbes reports.These 11/11 sales are popping up everywhere. Activewear brand Alo Yoga brought back its Singles’ Day sale this week, offering 30% off sitewide to members of its free ALO Access program. Beauty brand Tarte Cosmetics promoted “Singles’ Day Steals,” offering some of their most popular products for $11. In both cases, American marketers are joining a shopping holiday that started in China.From a Student Joke to a Global Sales EventSingles’ Day began in 1993, when four students at Nanjing University named November 11 (11.11) as a day to celebrate being single, Forbes reported. Alibaba turned the date into a retail event in 2009, with just 27 merchants on its Tmall platform. The festival, also called Double 11, now runs for weeks across rival platforms. Last year's festival ran for weeks, and generated around $238 billion in sales across China's major shopping platforms, according to Chinese data provider Syntun, the Associated Press reported.U.S. Brands Have Been Testing the Date for YearsThe idea isn’t brand new in the U.S. In recent years, Uniqlo, J. Crew, and Neiman Marcus all ran 11.11 sales or campaigns for American shoppers. By 2022, the list had grown to include Levi’s, Fresh, Urban Outfitters, and Alo Yoga, which offered up to 70% off sitewide, according to Modern Retail.For U.S. brands, the date fills a gap before Black Friday. In a 2022 Gartner study, 48% of U.S. consumers said they planned to shop for gifts in October and November, compared with 9% in December, according to Modern Retail. Brands also use the day to test demand.The bigger question is whether Singles’ Day can become a fixture of the U.S. holiday shopping calendar. As more American brands embrace the November 11 date, its growth will depend on whether shoppers come to recognize it as more than another excuse for a sale.Ade Akin covers artificial intelligence, workplace wellness, HR trends, and digital health solutions.(Photo by Rneaw/iStock)

U.S. Brands Are Taking Notice of Singles’ Day
News BY Grace Turney | October 27, 2026

Study Finds One in Three Shoppers Is Open to AI Gift Ideas This Holiday Season

More than one-third of U.S. consumers are very or extremely willing to use an AI tool or chatbot for holiday gift recommendations, according to a Gartner survey. The results suggest AI is emerging as a stop on the path to purchase, one that could influence which products shoppers consider before they ever reach a retailer’s website.Even though consumers are interested in AI, they are not giving up their previous shopping habits. According to Gartner, retailer websites, traditional internet searches, and friends’ and family wish lists are still the most frequently used sources of inspiration for holiday shopping. Stores and Amazon are still expected to be the main places for making purchases, with 77% of consumers intending to shop in stores and 75% planning to buy things on Amazon.The more significant figure is the number of sources that people who use AI consult. Shoppers who currently make use of AI tools to get holiday ideas look at an average of 4.48 sources, whereas those who don’t do so look at 3.24. People using AI are doing more research, not less.As Emily Weiss, a senior principal analyst in the Gartner Marketing practice, pointed out, “AI is beginning to establish a role in the holiday shopping journey, but it is not replacing the channels consumers already use. Consumers who use AI for holiday shopping are also consulting a wider range of other sources, meaning marketers should prepare for more fragmented discovery journeys.”The Gartner results support previous research from this year. As From Day One reported in August, Adobe discovered that 86% of consumers use AI when shopping, and the National Retail Federation found that 61% of back-to-school shoppers were using AI tools to look for prices, discounts, recommendations, and ideas.Shoppers also appear to want to stay in control of the final purchase. Adobe’s Vivek Pandya said consumers were comfortable going back and forth with an AI agent, then returning through paid search or social media to buy “with more confidence.”Weiss warned that AI should not be regarded as a separate and self-contained channel. “Marketers should not treat AI shopping tools as a standalone channel,” she said. “Consumers are layering AI onto existing shopping behaviors, making an already fragmented discovery journey even more complex.”She said products should be easy to discover and evaluate across AI tools, search, retailer websites, marketplaces, and stores. In practice, that means product information, pricing, and availability must be consistent across all platforms, so that AI doesn’t confuse shoppers with conflicting details.The lesson for this holiday season is that one third of shoppers being open to AI recommendations doesn’t mean that one third of the budget will go to AI recommendations. It means that brands now have one more place where they need to provide accurate information, just as they do in all the other places.Grace Turney is a St. Louis-based writer, editor, artist, and former journalist and librarian. She holds a Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS) and has nearly a decade of experience writing both full time and as a freelancer. See more of her work at graceturney17.wixsite.com/mysite.(Photo by lambada/iStock)

Study Finds One in Three Shoppers Is Open to AI Gift Ideas This Holiday Season

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