Forget Singles Day, Alibaba’s next big shopping holiday is coming right up

When you think of online shopping events in China, I’m sure Singles Day comes to mind. And with good reason: it’s not only the biggest online shopping event in the Middle Kingdom, it’s the biggest online shopping event in the world. But Alibaba has another seasonal shopping event, and this one might be more important in the long run.

It’s called Taobao Nianhuojie – loosely, “Taobao Spring Festival Product Holiday” – and it’s something that Alibaba has actually been doing for a few years now. In principle, it’s basically the same concept as Singles Day: a special time where you can find lots of products on Alibaba platforms (in this case Taobao) at significant discounts. But Nianhuojie this year comes with a special emphasis that Singles Day doesn’t: China’s rural ecommerce market.

Having pretty thoroughly penetrated China’s well-developed east coast cities, China’s ecommerce firms (and other internet companies, too) are increasingly looking for ways to strengthen their presence in the countryside. After more than two decades of rapid urbanization, China is no longer an agrarian nation, but more than 45 percent of its population – some 600 million people – still live in rural areas. That’s a big potential market.

“One aspect of [Taobao Nianhuojie] is that we want to better serve the countryside,” Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang told reporters following the conclusion of Singles Day. “The other is that we want to make the better products from the countryside available to urban consumers, especially the unique nianhuo [Spring Festival products].”

Some examples of delicious, delicious Nianhuo.

So what exactly are these Spring Festival products? It’s sort of a loose category, but the term Nianhuo is applied to the sorts of things one buys and brings home for the Spring Festival celebration. Often that means food – especially local delicacies, high-end products, expensive booze, or otherwise special items – but it can also be new clothes and other gift items. Previous Taobao Nianhuo sales events have included food and drink from a variety of regions (including international items) but also clothing, gadgets, and plane tickets (to properly celebrate Spring Festival, you’ve got to get home, after all).

This year, Alibaba’s Nianhuojie sale will be a collaboration between the regular Taobao team and Nongcun Taobao, an arm of the company focused on rural ecommerce. The company is trying to position this as something different from other consumer holidays because it’s about buying for others: “Nianhuojie is about buying something for your husband, wife, father, mother, and relatives,” said Taobao VP Zhang Qin. “Spring Festival is a very important holiday for every Chinese person, and we grow up with memories of Spring Festival shopping running through our heads, so Taobao wants to take this opportunity to help everyone better experience the culture and tradition of Spring Festival.”

“It’s a very important holiday for Taobao,” Zhang Jie told reporters.

This year’s Taobao Nianhuojie will reportedly kick off sometime in mid-January (which makes sense, since Spring Festival starts in early February this year). It will feature hundreds of international items and, through cooperation with local county governments and organizations, more than 100,000 different local specialty items. All of this will be available in cities and across the 8,000-plus villages Nongcun Taobao already covers.

If you’re expecting Taobao Nianjuojie to bring in a Singles-Day-like haul, don’t. Nongcun Taobao only contributed about US$47 million to Alibaba’s US$14.3 billion Singles Day total, suggesting that although China’s rural market may be big, it’s nowhere near being able to sustain the same level of online consumption as the cities. But of course, everything has to start somewhere, and China’s countryside isn’t going to embrace (or even be able to afford) urban consumption levels overnight.

With Taobao Nianhuojie, Alibaba is betting that laying the groundwork will be worth it in the long run.