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5 Ways Brands Can Prepare for Holiday Sales

An unpredictable year calls for an unpredictable holiday season. This week host Jennifer Kaylo Ruscin sits down with Marketing and Analytics Expert Bill Sinacore to discuss how retailers can prepare for the holiday season. More Sale Items, More Often Sinacore has seen up to a 20% decrease on discretionary spending due to the higher unemployment rate…

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5 Ways Brands Can Prepare for Holiday Sales

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An unpredictable year calls for an unpredictable holiday season. This week host Jennifer Kaylo Ruscin sits down with Marketing and Analytics Expert Bill Sinacore to discuss how retailers can prepare for the holiday season.

More Sale Items, More Often

Sinacore has seen up to a 20% decrease on discretionary spending due to the higher unemployment rate and uncertainty of many industries around the country. Not only will it be harder to have your customers come out to the store this holiday season, they will be more budget conscious than in previous years.

New Black Friday Buying Behavior

Many industry analysts are split on what retailers can expect from Black Friday this year

Increased Focus on SEO and Keywords

With the industry expecting a significant shift to ecommerce this year it is more important than ever before to ensure your website is optimized for SEO and that your customers can find exactly what they are looking for.

Importance of Social Media Relationship Building

Customers are starting to shift their loyalty to brands that can offer better deals, a way to fight against that is to remind your customers of your brand story and to build a genuine connection with them.

Great Imagery

Some surveys have shown that almost half of all Americans plan to do all of their holiday shopping online this year. This shift to online shopping has made product images an even more important part of the shopping experience.

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More Retail Insights

Deloitte: Holiday e-commerce to reach up to $319B in 2026–27

Deloitte: Holiday e-commerce to reach up to $319B in 2026–27

Deloitte forecasts U.S. holiday e-commerce of $316.1 billion to $318.9 billion for November 2026 through January 2027, up 7.5% to 8.4%. Total retail is projected to grow 4% to 4.8% to about $1.7 trillion. The faster online growth rate is a planning input for fulfillment staffing and site readiness.

  • 01Last season's total holiday sales grew 4.1% by Census Bureau count, above the 2.9% to 3.4% range Deloitte had forecast in fall 2025.
  • 02Deloitte's 2025 survey found 33% of U.S. consumers expected to use generative AI somewhere in their holiday shopping; product data quality now matters for machine readers as well as human ones.
  • 03Adobe's and Salesforce's holiday projections landed in late September and October last year, so the next two to six weeks should bring corroborating or conflicting numbers to plan against.

Sep 18, 2026

Club stores drove nearly half of the growth in $330B U.S. store-brand sales

Club stores drove nearly half of the growth in $330B U.S. store-brand sales

Circana reports U.S. private-label sales reached $330 billion, with store brands holding 24% unit share and 23% dollar share of CPG. Club stores drove nearly half of the growth. Circana expects share gains to continue through 2026 at a slower pace as national brands sharpen pricing and innovation.

  • 01Club channels account for nearly half of all U.S. private-brand growth, so a store-brand program benchmarked only against supermarket peers is missing where the volume is actually moving.
  • 02A one-point gap between store-brand unit share (24%) and dollar share (23%) suggests private label is no longer priced far below the market average, which changes the margin math for premium-tier extensions.
  • 03The EU's 50% private-label unit share is more than double the U.S. figure, a reference point for how much headroom exists even as Circana expects the U.S. pace to moderate through 2026.

Sep 17, 2026

Modern Retail: Meta Lab footprint set to nearly double

Modern Retail: Meta Lab footprint set to nearly double

Meta is nearly doubling the store footprint of Meta Lab, its retail concept for Ray-Ban AI glasses, according to Modern Retail. In November 2025, The Wall Street Journal reported on pop-up stores in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Burlingame and New York City. The stores are built for lingering and selfies. That design brief matters for any brand selling a wearable people must try on.

  • 01Meta designed its Meta Lab pop-ups around dwell time and photo-taking, with coffee stations and full-length mirrors; its creative director told The Wall Street Journal the company wants visitors to bring friends and stay a while rather than move through quickly.
  • 02For brands launching a wearable that shoppers need to see on their own face, Meta’s planned store expansion is a real-world reference point for solving the try-on problem.
  • 03The signal to watch is whether the new Meta Lab locations keep the pop-up format the Journal described or shift toward longer-term leases.

Sep 17, 2026

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