Shopify Sees Uptick in Black Friday, Cyber Monday Sales

Bloomberg

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00:00The forecasters, the predictors say that this will be another record shopping season in

00:06aggregate. The data available to you, what are you seeing? What are the trends?

00:11Yeah, you know, I heard what Spencer said there. I mean, look, Friday was another record-breaking

00:15Black Friday weekend. We saw about $6.2 billion in sales for Black Friday. That's up about 25%

00:22from last year. We saw peak sales of $5.1 million per minute on Friday. That happened around noon

00:28on Friday. That's up from $4.6 million last year as well. And if you pull up, actually,

00:34anyone can see this bfcm.shop. You can actually see global commerce happening right now in real

00:40time. We are currently seeing about $2.5 million in sales per minute, about 25,000 orders per

00:48minute. And we've seen just shy of 70 million unique shoppers buy from Shopify stores. So

00:53it's certainly shaping up to be another great day and happy to go into some of the merchants

00:57and some of the trends that we're seeing across Shopify.

01:00Harley, what I'd like to do is actually take a sort of geographic breakdown.

01:04Because in the limited data that we went through with Spencer, I think we're recognizing different

01:08speeds of growth in particular. US versus Europe. Could we start there?

01:14Yeah, sure. I mean, look, if you look at top selling countries across the world where Shopify

01:17sells, we have millions of stores. In places like the US, we power 12% of all e-commerce. So

01:22we have a really great view of things. US, UK, Australia, Germany, and Canada are the top

01:27five. Look at top three selling cities. You see LA, New York, and London. In US alone,

01:34LA, New York, and San Francisco were the top three. The other thing that we also saw is

01:38cross-border. But 17% of orders were cross-border orders, so shipped to a different country as

01:44well. And then in terms of top trending merchants that we saw, we saw Hatch, which is sort of this,

01:50they have something called the Restore 3, which is this phone-free alarm for kind of morning

01:53routines. Crunch Labs has this sort of kids build-it-yourself monthly toy subscription.

01:59Brook Linen on their super plush robe. And then Base has their weekender travel bag as well.

02:04So we're seeing across a bunch of different verticals do really well. But a big thing actually

02:08that we're seeing now is last year seemed to be a lot of talk about getting outside. Gifts were

02:13about, the products being sold were about, you know, things like skiing or hiking or camping.

02:18This year seems to be that home is really, you know, the winter here, where people are buying

02:22things for their home, whether it's stuff for the kitchen or puzzles or blankets. But generally,

02:28consumers are buying from brands they love. And we're fortunate those brands are on Shopify.

02:32What does that cross-border stat, that 17% signal to you, is that growing? I mean,

02:39how does that stand up to last year when perhaps tariffs went such a headwind?

02:42Yeah, I mean, what I think it means is that consumers generally are somewhat geographically

02:48agnostic. They want to buy from their favorite brands. You know, we heard from Gymshark. They

02:52had their biggest Black Friday sale ever online. AG1 Athletic Greens was up 50%. Brunt Workwear got

02:58an order every five seconds. So if you think about what consumers are purchasing, they're buying from

03:02brands they love, the Viores, the Figs, the Aloe Yogas, the on-runnings of the world. And I think

03:08they're agnostic to where those are coming from. The other thing that we're seeing, which is really

03:12interesting, is that this really wasn't just about discounts this year. People shop brands,

03:16not channels. We're almost living in sort of a post-world channel where, you know, the consumers

03:21bounce from a TikTok video to an AI agent, to a website, to a store, even in video games like

03:26Roblox, where Shopify powers commerce. The brands that really won the weekend made the experience feel

03:31the same everywhere they were. And that continues today.

03:35Let's talk, Holly, about the inevitable AI question, because you are like the global commerce

03:42company. You're helping people be digitally native. How are they interacting, therefore,

03:46in this world of brands with various AI agents, whether they're their own or whether they're

03:50external, third party?

03:52Yeah. I mean, look, it's still very, very early. But since January, we've actually seen AI-driven

03:56traffic on to Shopify stores up about 6x. But we've been preparing for this for years. We've been

04:02laying the rails for Agentic. We've already announced deals with Perplexity and more recently

04:06with ChatGBT, where brands on Shopify can sell directly in those conversations. No links, no

04:12redirects, just sort of this very seamless experience directly in the chat. And so I think

04:17we're going to see a lot more of that. Now, what permutation eventually wins? We're not sure yet,

04:22but we'll be ready for it. But the other side of it is really interesting, which is that brands,

04:26the merchants themselves are using AI to support them on the biggest shopping season weekend of the

04:30year. So we have something called Sidekick, which is the AI assistant built into Shopify,

04:35which knows everything about merchant stores, knows everything about Shopify. And we've seen

04:39over 100 million conversations with Sidekick. So merchants are able to do things like design,

04:44copyright, market, create these incredible analytics dashboards where they can decide where

04:49to spend in a much more sophisticated way. And so it's giving smaller merchants a real leg up

04:53against the bigger guys because this AI empowers them.

04:56I want to go back to tariffs, Harley, but with a slightly different way of asking the question.

05:01You can look at overall spend, but the question we're asking ourselves in the Bloomberg newsroom is,

05:06are consumers still spending and getting less in return? So what are the data sets that you're

05:12tracking that evidence that impact of tariffs, either through a diminished spend or same level of

05:18spend, but you just get less for it?

05:20We actually measure, you know, both consumer confidence, but also consumers' appetite to spend at

05:25checkout. And so far, I mean, as we speak right now, Ed, $2.5 million are going through checkout every

05:30single minute. So we've operated through all types of macro environments, and our focus is always the

05:35same, which is support merchants. And I think what we're seeing, though, is that, you know, whether

05:39during the pandemic, for example, we introduced tools like, you know, contact list delivery back in

05:442020. Well, now we're creating tools to help merchants navigate cross-border tariffs and navigate sort of

05:49some global uncertainty to make sure they have everything they need. So we're not complacent about this.

05:54We're tracking macro conditions. But so far, Shopify merchants consistently outperform the overall

05:59market. And we're seeing that they have a lot of buyers right now.

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