Week 44 - Holiday Spending Forecasts: Adobe's $275.1B Number, Deloitte's Second Opinion, Prime Big Deal Days Results, and Shopify's Canvas Tool

MaxWelcome to the Checkout Point, your quick dive into this week's eCommerce buzz with me, Alex, powered by Blicket. These 20 minutes pack the latest trends, news, and insights. Let's navigate the digital marketplace together. Ready? Let's go.

RachelOkay, quick poll. How many tabs do you have open with some holiday forecast in it?

Speaker 3Max, it's four. Four tabs, and they do not agree with each other.

RachelOf course they don't.

Speaker 3Which is my whole problem. Everybody wants to tell me how big the season is gonna be.

RachelRight? Big, bigger, biggest.

Speaker 3But what's the actual number, and does anyone else land in the same place?

RachelWait, that's the whole episode, isn't it?

Speaker 3Pretty much. Oh, and before I forget, I'm Rachel.

RachelAnd I'm Max, and this is the Checkout Point week 44, where we read the forecast so you can skip the tab hoarding.

Speaker 3Some of us can't quit. I'll be honest, I like a good spreadsheet.

RachelWe know. We've all seen your face at a pivot table.

Speaker 3Hey, it's a happy face.

RachelHere's the plan for today. One big forecast, a second opinion, a look at a recent sale event, and then something practical for your store.

Speaker 3And we'll tell you where we're guessing so you can decide how much to trust us.

RachelSo anyway, let's start with the big headline number everyone is quoting. Okay, the number. Adobe says US online holiday spending hits $275.1 billion.

Speaker 3Billion with a B.

RachelBillion with a B, and that's for November 1st through December 31st this year.

Speaker 3Fine, but a big number alone means nothing to me. Compared to what?

RachelUp 6.7% year over year, so a record, yeah.

Speaker 36.7. Okay, that's not nothing, but it's not a rocket either.

RachelRachel, you could make a lottery win sound like a rounding error.

Speaker 3I mean, I've signed off on budgets where 6% was the difference between a bonus and a hiring freeze, so I respect it.

RachelFair. Now, here's the part I liked. Adobe's release says Cyber Monday is still the biggest single day.

Speaker 3Of course it is. What's the number?

RachelMore than $15 billion in one day.

Speaker 3Wait, really? One Monday?

RachelOne Monday. People are sitting at their desks pretending to work and buying towels.

Speaker 3Guilty. But the twist is Black Friday. Adobe expects it to grow faster than Cyber Monday.

RachelWhy? Cyber Monday has the whole brand built around it. Discounts start earlier, so the Friday crowd isn't waiting for the weekend to wrap up. The deals are already out there.

Speaker 3Mm, so the early deals pull demand forward.

RachelAnd the discounts reach up to 30% off.

Speaker 3Up to. Those two words do a lot of work. In my Walmart days, up to 30% meant one sad item in the back of the page.

RachelThe one lonely blender.

Speaker 3Exactly. The lonely blender carries the whole banner. So what's the actual margin hit on a deal like that? Because a record top line doesn't tell me if anyone made money.

RachelTotally fair, and the forecast doesn't answer that. It's about spending, not profit.

Speaker 3Right, which is why I always read these as demand signals, not victory laps.

RachelSo what does a merchant do with that? If Black Friday is the faster-growing day, the timing of your own deals starts to matter.

Speaker 3It does. If competitors are discounting earlier, showing up on the Monday means you're arriving after the crowd already spent its attention.

RachelPicture a small shop that plans its big email for Cyber Monday because that's what the calendar always said. If demand is leaning towards the Friday, that email lands late.

Speaker 3Careful, though. Monday is still the biggest day. The forecast says Friday grows faster, not that Monday shrinks. Different claim.

RachelRight. So it's not abandon Monday, it's don't treat the weekend as dead air.

Speaker 3Exactly. Have an offer ready earlier and keep something fresh for Monday too.

RachelWait, doesn't that cost more, two big pushes instead of one?

Speaker 3It can. That's where I'd go through ad spend line by line and ask which push earns its keep. Don't split the budget down the middle because it feels fair.

RachelIs there a simpler version of that for a tiny store?

Speaker 3Pick the few things you actually want to sell and decide your lowest acceptable price on each before the season starts. Then you're not making margin decisions at midnight.

RachelMidnight decisions are how I ended up with a drawer full of cables. Okay, that's a me problem.

Speaker 3It's a lot of people's problem. And remember the window. November 1st through December 31st is two months, so stock has already to be on the shelf.

RachelOkay, but check this out. What are people actually buying? Because I expected TVs and gaming consoles.

Speaker 3Same. Give me the shiny stuff.

RachelNope. Shoppers are stocking up on essentials, personal hygiene products, clothing basics.

Speaker 3No way. Socks and shampoo?

RachelSocks and shampoo. Record holiday season, and people are loading carts with deodorant.

Speaker 3Very festive. Nothing says joy like a bulk pack of undershirts.

RachelI mean, come on, that's practical. If a discount is real, why not buy the stuff you were going to buy anyway?

Speaker 3Sure, but that changes how I'd read the headline. Essentials are low glamour. They're steady. They also tend to be lower margin, so the record might feel less recordy on the profit line.

RachelOkay, that's a fair worry. Though I'd say it also means shoppers are being smart with deals. They're timing it.

Speaker 3Timing it or just being cautious. Same cart, different mood.

RachelHa, yeah. The forecast doesn't tell us which.

Speaker 3And that's my issue. One company, one model, one story about what shoppers feel.

RachelHere's the thing. One forecast is just one opinion. Adobe's is a big one, sure.

Speaker 3So who else weighed in?

RachelSomeone did, and they framed it differently. Okay, second opinion. Deloitte weighed in, and Retail Dive reported on it. The headline, eCommerce growth of up to 8.4%.

Speaker 3Up to. Sorry, I know, we've used that one up, but yes, up to.

RachelYou're allowed one nod. Now, here's the comparison point. Retail Dive says Deloitte's overall holiday retail growing between four and four point eight percent.

Speaker 3So online is roughly double the rate of everything else.

RachelAt the top end, yeah. And that overall pile of retail is about one point seven trillion dollars.

Speaker 3Trillion, with a T.

RachelWait, did you just steal my bit?

Speaker 3Uh, borrowed. I'll return it.

RachelFine, but picture it. Most of that one point seven trillion is still people walking into stores, and online is the faster slice.

Speaker 3Mm. And I wanna flag the dates because this is where people get sloppy. Deloitte's window runs November twenty twenty-six through January twenty twenty-seven.

RachelThree months, so it runs a month longer than the other forecast's window.

Speaker 3Right. Different start, different finish, so you can't line up the two growth numbers and say one forecaster is more bullish.

RachelOh, come on. Everybody's gonna do it anyway. Eight point four is bigger than the other one. Screenshot, tweet, done.

Speaker 3And then someone builds a budget on it. I've watched that happen. A planning team grabs a number that measures a different window, and suddenly inventory is off.

RachelLike ordering pizza for twelve when the party's for eight.

Speaker 3Worse. Pizza gets eaten. Unsold inventory sits there and charges you rent.

RachelOkay, that's fair. So what do we actually take from two forecasts that don't line up?

Speaker 3The direction. Both of them say online grows faster than retail as a whole. Different windows, same shape.

RachelThat's kinda wild, right? Two separate forecasters, two different calendars, and they land on the same story.

Speaker 3Which makes me more comfortable than any single number would. Still, what's driving it?

RachelAnd this is the part I didn't expect. The Retail Dive report ties part of that online growth to shoppers using AI tools.

Speaker 3Wait, really? Part of it?

RachelPart. That's all the report says to me, so I'm not gonna invent a percentage.

Speaker 3Good, because I'd ask for the ROI on that immediately.

RachelOf course you would.

Speaker 3I'm serious. If AI helps shoppers find things faster, does the cart get bigger, or does it just get decided sooner? Those are very different outcomes for margin.

RachelHuh. Faster decision might mean fewer impulse tabs, which is bad for those of us who love impulse buys.

Speaker 3Or it means fewer abandoned carts. I don't know yet. The report doesn't settle it.

RachelLet me push on the window thing a bit because I think it's the most useful part for store owners.

Speaker 3Go for it.

RachelIf one window ends in December and the other runs into January, what's in that extra month?

Speaker 3The report gives us the window, not the breakdown, so I can't tell you what's counted in it. I could guess about returns and gift cards, but that would be a guess.

RachelSo a longer window might just be catching a different kind of shopping.

Speaker 3Might. That's a reason to be careful, not a conclusion. I'd rather say we don't know than make something up.

RachelFair. So what's the move for someone building a budget?

Speaker 3Treat each number as a statement about its own window. Write the dates right next to the number in your planning doc. It sounds silly, but that's how you stop the wrong number from sneaking into a slide.

RachelDates next to the number. Simple. I like it.

Speaker 3Simple is underrated. Most of my worst planning mistakes were complicated.

RachelAnd on the growth side, eight point four is a ceiling, right? Up to.

Speaker 3Right. I read it as the top of a range. If you plan like you'll hit the ceiling, you're betting the best case lands.

RachelSo plan for the middle and stay ready for the top.

Speaker 3That's the version I'd sign off on.

RachelAnd the lower retail number matters too, doesn't it? Four to four point eight is the baseline online is outrunning.

Speaker 3It is. If your store only grows with the market, you're keeping pace, not winning. The gap is where the opportunity sits, assuming you can serve it.

RachelServe it how?

Speaker 3Fast pages, honest stock levels, clear delivery dates. Boring stuff. It's like a supply chain bottleneck, except the bottleneck is a confused customer.

RachelI love that. Confused customer, the new choke point.

Speaker 3Mm-hmm. Though I'd hold that loosely. One report ties some growth to AI. That's a clue, not a verdict.

RachelTotally. So we've got a rosy forecast and a second one that agrees on direction. Nice, but forecasts are predictions.

Speaker 3And predictions cost nothing. What did actual shoppers just do?

RachelPrime Big Deal Days just happened. That's our peek at real behavior.

Speaker 3Fine. Let's see whether the shoppers read the forecasts.

RachelOkay, so Prime Big Deal Days, October sixth and seventh, two days. Retail Dive citing Adobe data says US online shoppers spent nine point eight six billion dollars in that window.

Speaker 3Wait, nearly ten billion in two days?

RachelNearly ten billion, two days, one sale event, and Amazon didn't even need a holiday to do it.

Speaker 3Which is convenient since the holiday is the thing we're trying to forecast.

RachelHuh, right.

Speaker 3But I wanna know what that number actually tells us. Ten billion is a headline. What's inside it?

RachelOkay, so this is the part I liked. Mobile sales grew twelve point eight percent, up to five point one billion dollars.

Speaker 3Mm.

RachelThat's fifty-two percent of the total. More than half of the spending happened on a phone.

Speaker 3Hmm. So the checkout flow on a small screen is not a side project anymore. It's the main store.

RachelTotally. I mean, come on, how many of us bought something from the couch with one thumb?

Speaker 3I plead the fifth.

RachelNoted.

Speaker 3But here's my ROI brain at work. When I ran promotions at a big retailer, mobile traffic looked amazing in the dashboard, and then the conversion rate on phones lagged desktop. So I'd wanna know whether your phone checkout can actually catch that traffic.

RachelFair. The source doesn't say anything about conversion, so I won't pretend it does. It only gives us that the share was fifty-two percent.

Speaker 3Good. Stay in your lane.

RachelAlways.

Speaker 3Though I can still tell you what I'd check in my own store, not from the source, just as homework.

RachelGo ahead.

Speaker 3Open your store on a phone, not a laptop pretending to be a phone, an actual phone. Try to buy something. Count the taps.

RachelAnd if you get annoyed, your customers got annoyed first.

Speaker 3Usually sooner. Form fields, a payment step that makes you type a long card number, a button you have to hunt for.

RachelI'd add ask somebody who's never seen your store to do it while you watch. Their pauses tell you more than a dashboard.

Speaker 3Fine. That's the one time I'll side with watching over metrics. Pair it with the numbers, though.

RachelAlways pair them. Deal.

Speaker 3What about the discounts? Because that's where margin goes to die.

RachelMarkdowns peaked at around twenty percent.

Speaker 3Twenty? That's it?

RachelYeah, that's it. Peaked, so some stuff was shallower than that.

Speaker 3Interesting, because a deal day with a twenty percent peak and nearly ten billion in sales says people didn't need fireworks. They needed a reason to click now.

RachelRight. And it gets better. Shoppers traded up. They went for higher ticket items.

Speaker 3Wait, really? Traded up during a sale?

RachelThat's what the report says: bigger items, not just the towel and toothpaste stuff.

Speaker 3Okay, I like that because it complicates the whole stocking up on basics story. Some people used the sale to finally buy the big thing.

RachelThe thing they've been eyeing for months.

Speaker 3Exactly. A day day is permission.

RachelPermission slip for the credit card.

Speaker 3There's one more piece. Amazon wasn't alone. Target and Walmart ran competing sales at the same time.

RachelWhich makes the total even more interesting, right? Shoppers had plenty of other places to go, and Amazon's event still pulled in that much online spending.

Speaker 3Careful. The number is what Adobe tracked across US online sales for the event. It doesn't tell us who took share from whom.

RachelYeah. No, that's fair. I'm just saying the rivals showed up, and the shoppers still showed up too.

Speaker 3That I'll give you. And for a store owner, that's the takeaway. Rivals will run their own sales, so you can't count on a quiet field.

RachelSo what does trade-up mean for a small store practically?

Speaker 3It means your higher priced items deserve some attention during a sale, not just the cheap add-ons. Good photos, clear details, a straight answer on shipping and returns.

RachelBecause nobody's spending real money on something they can't picture.

Speaker 3Right. And the source says nothing about margin on those items, so I'd check yours before you discount them.

RachelMeaning don't mark down your best seller just because the whole internet is marking things down.

Speaker 3Mark it down on purpose with a number you chose, not in a panic.

RachelWhich brings up the practical question. If phones are more than half the traffic and everyone's discounting at once, how do you get your store ready? Shopify just dropped a new tool for exactly that.

Speaker 3Okay. Tell me it comes with a return on investment.

RachelHa. Good question. Honestly, the answer is not yet proven, but here's the tool. It's called Canvas. Shopify rolled it out on October first, and it's a store design tool where you just talk to it.

Speaker 3Talk to it how?

RachelChat. MediaPost reports that merchants build and customize a storefront by chatting with Sidekick, Shopify's AI agent. You describe what you want, it builds.

Speaker 3Hmm, so the page builder is now a conversation.

RachelPretty much. And I love this because I have lost whole afternoons dragging a banner three pixels to the left.

Speaker 3Three pixels. Very high stakes work.

RachelHey, it matters to me.

Speaker 3Okay, but you didn't really answer me. What's the actual ROI? A chat box that makes a pretty homepage is nice. Does it move revenue?

RachelNothing in what we've got says that. No conversion numbers, no before and afters. It's a launch, not a case study.

Speaker 3Right. So I'm treating it as a speed question. How fast can a small team change a storefront when the season is already running?

RachelWhich in the middle of the holidays is the whole worry. You need a new landing page on Tuesday, not in three weeks.

Speaker 3I've lived that. At a big retailer, a banner change meant a ticket, a queue, and somebody's calendar. Basically a supply chain bottleneck, except the product was a rectangle of text.

RachelA rectangle of text stuck in customs.

Speaker 3Exactly.

RachelNow, here's a piece I didn't see coming. MediaPost ties Canvas to a September agreement with Meta.

Speaker 3Wait, really? Meta?

RachelYeah. The deal integrates Meta's Muse agent with Shop Pay.

Speaker 3Huh. So the checkout piece is plugged into an AI agent from a completely different company?

RachelThat's how MediaPost links the two, yes. I'd be careful, though. The article connects them. It doesn't say Canvas runs on Muse, and I won't pretend it does.

Speaker 3Fair. Two announcements, one thread. Build the store with an agent, and an agent can also help someone pay in it.

RachelWhich loops right back to the AI shopper thing from the Deloitte report. If shoppers are using AI tools, stores probably need to be easy for those tools to work with.

Speaker 3Probably, though that's us reading between the lines, and the sources don't go there.

RachelTotally. Flagging it as our guess.

Speaker 3Okay, what about Shopify itself? Is this a company that can afford to experiment?

RachelShopify's own press page says Q2 results in August showed growth above thirty percent, and that was across GMV, revenue, gross profit, and free cash flow.

Speaker 3All four? Not just the flattering one.

RachelAll four, which is rare. Usually, somebody's free cash flow is limping behind.

Speaker 3Usually, it's in the back of the group chat, not answering.

RachelRight. And that same press page says Q3 results are scheduled for November third.

Speaker 3So that's the next real test. If holiday prep tools are working, you'd hope to see it somewhere in that story.

RachelYou'd hope, though Q3 ends before the holiday rush, so I wouldn't expect Black Friday in there.

Speaker 3Mm, that's a good catch. I'd say watch what they say about the quarter ahead.

RachelYeah. And the press page also lists an October sixth post about the first holiday season of the agentic era. We only have the title, so I'm not gonna guess what's in it.

Speaker 3Wise. Title alone, we can say the company is calling this a first.

RachelWhich is a big claim to hang on a season. Very confident.

Speaker 3Confident is cheap. Show me the lift.

RachelThere she is.

Speaker 3Somebody has to be.

RachelOkay, before we wrap, let me ask the practical one. Say you run a small store, maybe two people. How would you even try Canvas?

Speaker 3Carefully. I'd start with something low risk, like a single landing page for a sale, not your whole homepage.

RachelRight. Build the thing you can afford to get wrong.

Speaker 3And I'd decide in advance what success looks like. Compare that page to your normal one, same traffic source if you can. Otherwise, it's just vibes.

RachelI'd also keep a copy of what works now. If the chat builds something weird at the worst moment, you want a way back.

Speaker 3That's the part nobody wants to hear. Speed is great until you're fast in the wrong direction.

RachelAnd on the meta side, I'd just keep an eye on the news. We don't know how those pieces fit together beyond what MediaPost connects.

Speaker 3Agreed. Watch November third, read what Shopify says about its own numbers, and don't build a strategy on a launch announcement.

RachelAll right, let's wrap this up. We've got forecasts, a deal day reality check, and a chat box that builds stores.

Speaker 3Which is plenty for one week. Let's land it. Okay, so I'll give the takeaway because someone has to bring a spreadsheet to this party.

RachelOf course you will.

Speaker 3Before you set a holiday budget, read more than one forecast. Two forecasters gave us two different framings, and they still pointed the same direction.

RachelRight.

Speaker 3So use them as a range, not whichever number made the nicest headline.

RachelAnd if someone asks what that looks like in practice, because use a range sounds great on a podcast and gets vague on a Tuesday afternoon.

Speaker 3Fair. Step one, write down the low case and the high case before you spend anything, not after. After, you'll just defend whatever you already bought.

RachelHuh, so the budget gets decided before the feelings do.

Speaker 3Exactly. Step two, tie each big spending decision to a number you chose in advance. How much inventory, how much ad spend, how deep a discount. If you can't say why, it's a vibe, not a plan.

RachelI mean, come on. We've all bought a vibe before.

Speaker 3I've approved a vibe or two. They don't show up well in a quarterly review.

RachelNoted for the record.

Speaker 3Step three, decide what would make you change course. If sales run ahead of your middle case, what do you do? If they lag, what do you cut first? Settle that while you're calm.

RachelThat one's smart because in the moment, everybody wants to either panic or celebrate.

Speaker 3Right. A rule you wrote in October is worth more than a mood you have in December.

RachelWait, so you're telling me the safest plan is to not fall in love with a number.

Speaker 3I'm telling you the number doesn't love you back. It never once sent me a card.

RachelOuch. Poor number. It was just trying its best.

Speaker 3It was. But a forecast is a forecast. It's someone's best guess with good graphics.

RachelWhich is a great way to put it. Good graphics, honest uncertainty.

Speaker 3And honestly, that's what I'd like people to take from today, not any one figure. The habit of asking, "What window is this? Who made it? And what does it leave out?"

RachelThat's three questions you can ask of basically any number someone shows you.

Speaker 3Any number, including ours, by the way. We told you where we were guessing, and you should hold us to that.

RachelHold us to it, yes. Send us a note if we got something wrong. We can take it.

Speaker 3Mostly. Max cries a little.

RachelQuietly in the other room.

Speaker 3Back to our opening question, how big is this season? Big, and online probably growing faster than the rest of retail. The honest answer is a range plus a plan.

RachelI'll take that over a single number any day.

Speaker 3Better.

RachelAnd for the record, that's a nicer answer than the four tabs I started with. Four tabs, four opinions, zero sleep.

Speaker 3Close a few of them. Keep the ones with dates on them.

RachelWow, productivity advice from the tab police.

Speaker 3Somebody has to enforce it.

RachelOne more thing before we go, and I mean this. If you run a small store, this stuff can feel like a lot. Forecasts, sale events, new tools, everything changing at once.

Speaker 3It does, and you don't have to act on all of it. Pick one thing from this episode. One. Do that this week.

RachelMaybe it's checking your store on an actual phone. Maybe it's writing the dates next to your numbers. Maybe it's just deciding your lowest price before the rush.

Speaker 3Any of those beats doing nothing and hoping. That's my whole career in one sentence.

RachelThat should be on a mug. Oh, wait. We retired the mug.

Speaker 3We did. Moving on.

RachelSo anyway, thank you. Seriously, thanks everybody for hanging out with us this week. Seriously, it means a lot.

Speaker 3It does. You've got a lot of places to spend your time, and you picked a couple of people arguing about spreadsheets. We don't take that lightly.

RachelAnd if you've been with us a while, thank you for sticking around. If you're new, welcome. Pull up a chair. Bring your tabs.

Speaker 3Maybe not all of them.

RachelMaybe not all of them.

Speaker 3If you liked the show, follow it wherever you listen. It's the easiest way to catch the next one without remembering what day it is.

RachelAnd send it to the one friend who keeps asking if this year's gonna be big.

Speaker 3Or the colleague who owns the budget. They'd probably thank you, eventually.

RachelTotally. They're texting you right now, I promise.

Speaker 3Probably with a screenshot of one forecast.

RachelAsk them for a second one. This has been The Checkout Point. See you next week.