A short read from BFCM Intelligence Report. The full BFCM Intelligence Report for Fashion Entrepreneurs is available as a free download.
Published by The Asor Collective
Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2025 broke volume records. 202.9 million Americans shopped during the weekend. Shopify merchants moved $14.6 billion, up 27 percent year over year.
And yet order volume rose only 1%.
That gap is the story. More people are shopping, spending more in total, and buying with far more precision. Average expected spend per shopper fell 4% to $622. 51% of holiday shoppers had already started buying before the BFCM weekend arrived. RetailNext called the 2025 consumer “surgical,” and the description holds: they enter with a narrow mission, they have already researched the product, and they are waiting for the right price.
For a small brand, that changes where the work lives.
Three shifts worth planning around
Black November is the real season. The traditional Friday-to-Monday window now stretches across weeks. Brands that offered early access to email and app subscribers captured demand before ad costs peaked. Your October content and November warm-up sequence are doing more commercial work than your actual Black Friday email.
Mobile and social are not optional. 63% of Cyber Monday purchases completed on mobile, the highest share ever recorded. One in ten shoppers abandons a slow mobile experience. TikTok Shop leads among Gen Z at 40% of users; Facebook remains the top BFCM platform for Millennials at 53%.
Discount depth is not the only lever. 38% of shoppers only buy at 50% off or deeper, yet high-trust brands are moving away from deep discounting without losing customers. Curated gift sets consistently outperform single-item promotions because the discount reads as larger while margin stays protected.
What is selling for holiday AW26
Outerwear is the anchor: funnel-neck coats, leather trenches, and oversized statement pieces land precisely in the gift and self-purchase window. Accessories carry the budget-constrained shopper. Deep cobalt, saturated red, and camel are the hero palette. Heritage and craft narratives convert unusually well between October and December, which favors smaller makers with a real story.
The one thing to take away
Impulse is declining. Consideration cycles are lengthening. The purchase made on Black Friday was decided in October.
Build the season, not just the sale.
Read the full report
The BFCM Intelligence Report for Fashion Entrepreneurs goes deeper: nine benchmark data points, six behavior shifts, five holiday product priorities, a six-point founder strategy, a month-by-month holiday calendar, and a note on sourcing and data reliability.
Read the full report → Click here to Download the PDF