Retailers to Jump-Start Holiday Shopping Season with 10.10 Sale

It feels like there isn't much that the world collectively agrees on these days, but it's safe to say there is one thing that unites all of us and that is the global agreement that this has been a strange, strange year.

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We’d all like to think that the worst is behind us, but if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we should learn to go with the flow because bizarre things have a way of quickly becoming reality.

As we head into the holiday season there are so many questions about whether or not our favorite traditions will need to be modified this year. If shopping on Black Friday is something that you do faithfully, this might be the year that everything changes.

Holiday spending accounts for 20 percent of retail sales in the United States and with the exception of 2008, spending has increased each year since 2002. However, retailers are already bracing for the possibility that 2020 will see a huge decline in spending but they’re not willing to wait until Black Friday to find out if their prediction will come true or how consumers will be spending their money this holiday season.

According to Bloomberg, more than two dozen national retailers are reported to be participating in a new holiday discount event on October 10. The event will be called "10.10" and it will mirror Alibaba's Singles' Day in China which falls on November 11 and is the biggest shopping event in the world (bringing in 38.4 billion in 2019 alone).

The goal for "10.10" in the United States is for large chain stores to get a jumpstart on their holiday shopping season so that consumers can buy things without depleting supplies during the busiest shopping time of the year and also to control the number of shoppers inside stores at any given time.

It appears that "10.10" will be an online shopping experience and according to Bloomberg, the holiday is the brainchild of Deborah Weinswig, a retail consultant for the rewards app Shopkick, which is set to help launch the sale day with a special "10.10" website.

Amazon is also anticipated to jump on early shopping. Amazon is notorious for its yearly Prime Day which is usually held in the middle of the summer and according to CNET, this year, Prime Day is rumored to have been rescheduled for October 26.

To get ready for an increase in shipments and deliveries, UPS and FedEx have announced they will hire a combined 170,000 seasonal employees and Amazon has announced it too will be hiring extra full and part-time employees - to the tune of 100,000 people.