The trends that will dominate Black Friday and Cyber Monday, from AI search to experiential pop-ups

0:07Hello, and welcome to the Modern Retail Podcast. I am senior reporter Gabby Barco. This week, we're doing things a little bit different for the Thanksgiving weekend. I am joined by Glossy's Dani Parisi and Lexi Lepsak. How are you two? I'm so excited. Thank you for having me here, Gabby. Good to talk to you. Yeah, I'm excited for this conversation. Yeah, so this week, we have a very special episode where we are essentially going to be talking about all things Black Friday, including our own shopping experiences and how we approach the slew of sales, as well as, you know, everything we've learned about through our reporting and how things have shifted year to year.

0:49So stay tuned.

0:56So Black Friday is just about here. If you're listening to this, it may have already happened, but we are recording it the week before. Gabby, you are our resident retail reporter. Why don't you tell us how do you approach Black Friday? We'll all share and probably we'll talk about some of the interesting things we've seen. Do you mean as a reporter or as a consumer? I guess as a consumer, but both. I mean, I guess we'll talk about both. Yeah. What's your personal approach? My personal approach is I guess I've shopped less and less on actual Black Friday weekend. probably as many people have in the last few years because brands are offering deals pretty much throughout the fall at this point.

1:42Although there are exceptions, there are some that just strictly still do the Black Friday weekend. And so you do have to get in there. And then from a reporting standpoint, I always like to kind of look back at what's been happening the previous couple of years, seeing any sort of micro trends because the last few years have been quote unquote weird for the industry. And so, but at the same time, I think there's, we all talk a lot about how there's a lot of conflicting data. We'll get into it in a minute, but, you know, we're told that the consumer is conscious and everybody's tight wallet this year whatnot.

2:21But every year they, you know, the retail industry seems to set more records for holiday sales, like increase every year, which we'll talk about. But yeah, so it can be kind of hard to go all in with the doomsday mindset sometimes because Americans love shopping. That seems to be like all roads lead back to that whenever I'm reporting is it's a very resilient customer base. Yeah. And sometimes when I see the data and it's like, you know, this year was terrible or something, and then you look, it's like 1 % less than the year before or something like that. It's like, yeah, but people are still buying a lot of stuff.

3:00Yeah. I mean, I guess that's the whole idea of like shareholder calendars, right? Anything down is not good. So it should always be increasing. And then, of course, there's inflation. You know, a lot of brands have raised their prices. So I just always assume that that's also playing into the volume. You know, if you're paying more for something, then you're probably going to have better sales top line wise. But yeah, what about you guys? Lexi, what about you? Sure. Yeah. You know, similar to you, Gabby, I feel like I've been shopping less and less on Black Friday. I've certainly had a few go by where I don't buy anything.

3:37And I just kind of put my head in the sand trying to save a little bit of money and not go crazy. But in the past, I've mostly focused on Black Friday for considered purchases, things that are expensive, things that I know I'm going to buy, things that I want to buy. And it's like if there's a deal, if it's a good time to do it. So like in the past, I think years ago, I bought a leather jacket on a great discount that I already wanted. Or I buy maybe an electronic or maybe, you know, think about that like one considered gift that you're purchasing for the year. That's sort of been my strategy.

4:08But then I also am up for like the mega sales. I know you guys have probably seen these as well where brands are just going like hard. They're going like 40%, 50 % off. So if I need to restock something, I might hit one of those sales. And then I also think about sort of what's already in my cart at like the few stores that I, you know, will buy my everyday sort of things from. I'll sort of start to kind of build my cart a little bit. But I also, in terms of sales, I've sort of changed my attitude a bit about it because I do tend to buy things I don't need and that I don't even really want because they're on sale.

4:45Do you guys do that too? Yes. I used to. Tell us all this time. I try not to do that. Yes. I try not to do that anymore. And which brings me to my next question, actually, is do you put things in carts, which if you're a brand listening, I'm sure you hate this, but you put things in carts ahead of it the weekend. So I'm doing that right now on things I actually do want slash need. And then, you know, while you're eating your pie or having wine on the couch, you I know my sister and I do this. we kind of start to compare cards. Like, are you actually going to hit checkout or should I have some more wine before I do that?

5:26I'm kidding, but not really. Yeah, so do you, I guess it's almost like, because I'm thinking back of when I was growing up or even working in retail, you know, you had to kind of go to bed early if you wanted to shop on Black Friday. And now it's like, it's almost like we subconsciously built these other weird Black Friday shopping habits without realizing it. That's, I haven't done that one, but I kind of do something similar. Like I don't put it in the cart, but I do make, I sort of have a running gift list for everyone in my life, my wife and my parents and everybody. But I also have one for me that's just stuff that I want or brands that I like.

6:04And then when Black Friday rolls around, I go and check out each of those brands and maybe a product individually and see if it's on sale instead of just like going and seeing what's on sale and buying something because I, that I hadn't thought about before. I'm very like slow to make decisions and I ruminate on stuff and like research and ask people their opinion and stuff. I do that a lot. And so I have like a list of things that I want. And sometimes it's a specific, you know, I want this leather jacket from this specific brand or it's just, I want a new leather jacket. And then I kind of like, so I'm a little more intentional.

6:38I don't know how common that strategy is, but that's how I do it. I have like specific things I'm looking for. I have a feeling we probably all are like that, But I was saying actually to in our staff meeting the other day, I feel like I'm probably a bad shopper because I like look at all the reviews and I really sit on items before checking out unless it's, of course, something you really need. But yeah, I think I kind of fall in that bucket, too, whereas I know a lot of people who really just love that instant gratification of getting something on sale. What about you, Lexi? I'm a little bit more considered about Black Friday as well.

7:14If I order something on Black Friday, I probably know it's not going back. It's not being returned. I'm not going to try to deal with all of that. So I try to buy things that I know I want, not add a lot of risk into it. But I will say that 99 % of all of my Black Friday purchases have been online. I don't normally go into stores, which I might actually change this year. I want to do a little thrifting bargain hunting on the weekend. So maybe I'll do that. I don't know. So do you guys shop in person or do you do digital? I do like to avoid the malls or shops that weekend, but I did, I think a couple of years ago, I found myself at the mall.

7:56And actually I was surprised that just, it wasn't that bad, like as I remembered, you know, and this is in New Jersey. So I think maybe my memory, I just had this chaotic traffic and parking and it was actually okay, probably because a lot of people were doing the same thing, shopping online. Danny are you hitting stores in person you know I used to do that a lot with with my cousin he and I would every year like go to the this mall in Long Island the next day haven't done that in forever but also I don't know about you guys I'm not a big like returner I don't buy a bunch of stuff and then return because that's too I'm like that's such a headache I don't like I don't even want to deal with that so and also because like I said I spent a lot of time thinking about something I want to buy before I buy it Sometimes maybe too much.

8:42I really should just pull the trigger. So I do shop online, but I also hate returning stuff. So I definitely have bought things and I got it and I didn't like it. And it's just still in my closet. That's the worst. Not returning something. It's just sitting there. What does it count as if you do buy online, pick up and store? Because I don't know if that's like boomer behavior, but I actually really like it. Because then if you like, if your size doesn't work, you can just exchange it right there. Obviously, that also is dictated by whether that's an option and it's available because a lot of things I think we'll talk about things selling out, right, is another fear while you're buying things on sale.

9:26yeah i think we should also talk about prices um because and and the the discounts because i know you guys have both covered this um in your respective beats and it's i'm sure it's a very similar story to what we see in fashion but it's like i think you're either you're seeing a lot of brands doing um shallower discounts or they've they're doing the normal amount of discounts but they've also raised their prices because of tariff so it's like functionally the same price Um, so I kind of, and again, we're recording this before Black Friday, um, but you know, a lot of the deals are out there already.

10:01And I think there is a feeling that the, uh, you know, people are spending less, they have less money. I don't know about you. My rent went up this year, which sucked, um, after not increasing for like three or four years, which was nice. Um, so there's less money floating around, I think in people's wallets. And at the same time, the brands do not want to discount too much. because they also, you know, are tight. So I feel like there's a little bit of an impasse there. I don't know if you guys have noticed any of this already, just on an individual level. Yeah. Maybe this is a good time to talk about, yeah, sort of what's going on in the macroeconomic factors because, you know, of course, we have to acknowledge things like tariffs, which is why a lot of brands increase their prices.

10:46Although now I'm like, you know, if the Supreme Court ends up overturning that, are they going to decrease their prices? Something tells me probably not. Definitely not. But yeah, you've got that. You've got the recent government shutdown where a lot of people still haven't been paid. And of course, there's mass layoffs happening everywhere. So what else do you feel like is contributing to this general anxiety? Because I don't think it's new. I think last year, I remember being told that the election was creating a lot of anxiety because it was just very close to Black Friday. So there's always something.

11:19But this year, I think the economy, you know, capital letters, it seems to be weighing everybody down. I mean, I certainly think so. I think that, I mean, it's not to be like doom and gloom, but I think we've been in a recession for a while now. I think that the recession indicators are just so varied and diverse nowadays. And we've been looking at the stock market for the last several months and saying, oh, it's okay. But I mean, that's not what's happening when you go into stores. I mean, prices are up like crazy. And I know we just keep saying that, but there's less to go around. But I do think, and every single year, I just continually am surprised with how much people will spend for the holidays.

12:02And you guys both pointed that out at the beginning. Like people love to shop. People are not giving up their holidays. We know that culturally, this is one of the most, I mean, most important things in our society. And so I don't think people are going to stop shopping. I think we'll be going into more debt. I think that people will potentially be shopping earlier like they were last year for those discounts, though. It's sort of my prediction. Yeah, I think that's something that started like during the two Prime Day events. And yeah, so just to give the listeners some context, you know, maybe we could talk about last year's holiday sales.

12:38So, you know, as I said, even despite the election and economy anxiety, I think 2024, the Census Bureau data showed that the holiday retail sales increased by like 4 % over 2023 and holiday sales hit a record. Let me say this,$994.1 billion. I feel like the point one is important. That was a number from the NRF from January of this year. So yeah, like we keep saying, obviously people are shopping, although where's that cash coming from? We also see a lot of data about credit card and buy now, pay later debt increasing. So yeah, it is going somewhere. Yeah, I think you both make extremely good points.

13:26Lexi, I 100 % agree that we basically are in a recession except a huge AI bubble is making it look like we're not. But when that inevitably pops soon, we will for sure fully be in one. But also I just looked up some data on this and Buy Now, Pay Later obviously has been growing a lot. And right now I think it said like half of American consumers might use Buy Now, Pay Later this holiday season, which is higher than usual. And I've said on the Glossy podcast a few times that the business model of those companies is a little bit predatory, but they flourish when people need money, and that's right now.

14:07So definitely we will see a lot of that this season, I think. Yeah, we saw some recent headlines from Klarna, for example, where a lot of people are defaulting on their loans. And it tends to skew young because the young people who think they're being smarter by not opening high interest credit cards are falling into these installment payments. Um, this is maybe a good time to start talking about some of our favorite or at least trends that we've been spotting, uh, this season that don't necessarily have too much to do with like discount or promo because we all know, you know, pretty much every brand is doing some kind of site-wide or percentage off.

14:50Uh, but yeah, why don't we talk a little bit about, I think we can zoom out and start with the modern gift guide. And Danny, I think this is something you track a lot, which is like, if we step back, how do we all find gifts? Which is such a fascinating topic to me because, you know, we work in publishing. We know there's gift guides. We know people look at listicles. But, you know, people find gifts in very different ways these days, mostly on social media. And, you know, spoilers, chat GPT and AI is, of course, generating their own gift guides now, too. Yeah. Yeah, so I did some, I definitely tracked this a lot and I did some research on this.

15:30I think for gift guides this year, I feel like it's a convergence of like old and new a little bit. So the print catalog is back. Nordstrom, like famously, I think in September, went back to doing a print catalog for the holiday. It's 100 pages long with 800 different products in it. a lot of it is very focused on lower price items, like under$100, which is also mirrored in their New York City store. If you've been to the one in Manhattan, it's like they have two entire floors just dedicated to like gift things under$100. But it's like kind of converges with the print catalog. So print catalogs are back and like Amazon is doing a catalog.

16:09I mean, they've done one for a couple of years now for kids, but they're fully digital and they're doing a print catalog, which I think is notable. And then there's brands that have been doing it for a while like Marine Layer is another one. And then on the flip side, you mentioned, Gabby, there's like ChatGPT, which I'm always wary of like repeating stats about ChatGPT because there's so much AI boosterism out there, you know, where people are like insisting it's going to change the world. We mentioned the AI bubble earlier. I've seen reports that around 60 % of people will use AI to find deals or search for deals this holiday season.

16:41We've definitely written about it on Glossy, and I feel like Modern Retail has covered this as well, but the way brands are changing their websites or their marketing or their online store in order to get more easily picked up by something like ChatGPT, which crawls the internet in a different way than a traditional Google search, is very notable. So I have more to say, but I can pause if anyone wants to weigh in on gift guides. I got a few in the mail catalogs specifically, and I kind of felt that like ping of nostalgia from getting the Toys R Us catalog when, I don't know if you guys got that when you were little, but going through and like circling your things.

17:26And I don't know, I think that bringing back the catalog is really fun. There were no prices in the Amazon one, I did notice, which was like a little funny as opposed to like thinking back to the Toys R Us era. It makes sense, probably. No, no. I mean, it makes perfect sense. I mean, like, I feel like the prices are different every day when you go on there. Because it's dynamic pricing that's changing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I am kind of surprised, or maybe not really. I don't know if that's a recession indicator that Nordstrom decided to go more value driven because I don't know if you guys remember a few years back, like a lot of the department stores really leaned into more luxury or these like kind of ridiculous, you know, I think the Nemo Marcus or the Bergdorf's of the world were doing these really luxury forward catalogs that in a way we're kind of, it's almost like the luxury advent calendars to me where they're like made to go viral more so than maybe, you know, sell to people.

18:22But yeah, what do you think is driving this value, I guess, when it comes to something like analog out of home, something you're getting in your mailbox that you're not technically clicking on? you know i i thought about this and i'm not sure well i first i can say i think i know why there's so many more like digital gift guides in general like i don't know if you guys noticed this but i feel like every publication on earth no matter how tangentially related it is to like consumer goods has a gift guide the new yorker has a gift guide now but also a lot of brands that i follow and i'm sure for you too are pitching to get into gift guides aggressively they pitch us all the time and we don't do gift guides.

19:05But there's now tons of sort of smaller, under-the-radar gift guides on Substack, for example. There's Habitually Chic and the Wardrobe Editor are two big fashion Substacks that have gift guides with affiliate links and everything in it. And I think despite that being sort of an old idea, I think that is related to ChatGPT and AI searches because that's the kind of thing if you search on ChatGPT it's going to pull from. Like, is it's looking for when you search something on chat, GVT, it's like looking for high quality text. You know, it's looking for articles from reputable, you know, newspapers and magazines and things like that.

19:43So if you can get into a lot of different gift guides, that I think makes it more likely that you show up when somebody is searching for deals through chat, GVT, because that's what it's going to pull. But then print catalogs, obviously, chat, GVT has no idea what's in a print catalog, unless it's like published out there digitally as well, which I don't think they are in a notable way. So I honestly don't really know what's driving that. I mean, I think they're cool. I like them. I like receiving them. Maybe because, you know, digital ads are so saturated and expensive that those marketers think there's, you know, a better return.

20:19I think it's very fun. And I appreciate it on a personal level from a business perspective. I'm not 100 % sure yet what the strategy is. I don't know if you guys have thoughts on that, though. I think it's exactly what you said, Dani. I think it's like it's so saturated online. Every single influencer, every single publication has numerous gift guides. And I don't mind looking at some of their gift guides. Sometimes it's a great way to discover product, but there's just so many of them. And so much of it is just an affiliate revenue play. That's why all the publications are doing it. It's so low lift.

20:53An intern normally puts them together. I mean, well, maybe not an intern anymore. Maybe an assistant nowadays. I don't know if they do interns anymore. That might be illegal now. Yeah. I don't know if we could talk about the affiliate publishing business. We'll go down a completely different rabbit hole. But well, actually speaking of, yeah, I mean, where do those fall now? Because so many publishers and affiliate programs were built on this model, right? Which is like, for those unfamiliar, It's essentially the commission model, right? Which is like, if I click on something on Oprah's gift guide or strategist, wire cutter, et cetera, they are getting a cut from that commission through the link.

21:31Are those as valuable anymore? I guess I've heard some marketers say that they are worried that that's going to start losing share to the AI, you know, the bots that are curating your gift guide on your behalf. But it might be a little too early because the ChatGPT, like Shopify integration, all of that just started. No, I think you're right on that. I think that it is so saturated. I think the reason why catalogs are having this moment and all of these like IRL activations we're going to talk about and all of this sort of interesting stuff is just to kind of stand out. and you see the pendulum sort of swinging all the way to AI and everything's so techie and so automated.

22:18And now it's like, I think people are just craving this other side of things again. I think it's pretty simple, but I don't know. And also like a lot of brands, they pay to be in catalogs. They pay the retailers to be in catalogs and a lot of the gift guides online, they pay to be in those gift guides. So it's a very complex sort of atmosphere around that as well. Yeah. What about strategies that are not just discounts? Because I feel like this is, for many years now, I get pitches, and I'm sure you guys do too, that are like, we're not doing a discount this Black Friday and we're making a big deal out of it, which I think is perfectly valid.

22:58But particularly now, I mentioned this earlier, I feel like there's this impasse where the retailers would love to not do discounts or the brands would. And I think a lot of customers now are even more discount focused than they were before because of the economy being terrible. So I don't know. Have you guys seen any interesting strategies around Black Friday that are not just cutting 10 % off or 20 % off something? Yeah. I've seen a few. And Gabby, I know we were forwarding things back and forth all around this one big sort of idea of using scent to do sort of a version of proximity marketing around shopping.

23:35So we've seen Nest do this in the past, scenting Fifth Avenue with their holiday fragrances. And I kind of thought that was sort of a one-off. And then this year, I know Gabby and I have both seen a couple brands that are doing this again this year, Bath & Body Works. They're doing what they call a scent takeover at Grand Central in New York where they're going to scent the whole area with some of their holiday scents. They're also doing like a movie theater scent-a-grations where they have ads for their products. And they're also scenting the air that feels very much like a soaring over California Disney ride.

24:14I don't know if you guys have been on that, but there's like different scents that kind of hits you in the face and makes it kind of fun. And so I think that's been sort of interesting. There was one more as well that I found, Scentbird, a fragrance subscription box. They scented a corner in Soho in the middle of November as sort of like a collaboration with Givenchy, which Scentbird carries a bunch of different fragrances. So I thought that was kind of interesting and a way to sort of stand out, especially since fragrance is having a big moment. Yeah, I thought that was kind of a cool one. Have you guys seen anything like that in person?

24:51You guys are both in New York. I'm not. Yeah, I think there's definitely a lot of different examples we can point to. But this idea of, you know, I actually asked Nest about this because I am, you know, we do have a story coming out about it. Is that, you know, what draws people to this? First of all, you've got a captive audience. There are literal people walking by. And there's that sensorial aspect, right? where it's like that Christmassy scent really draws people in. And so they're really betting that people will stop and will engage. There's QR codes involved. There's actually, they do have a partnership with a couple of department stores on Fifth Ave where you can actually walk in and shop for the candle.

25:35And so, yeah, I think these are examples of, they're almost like pop-ups, right? I mean, they don't necessarily fall into the classic shoppable pop-up, But it is something that you actually do have to be there in person, you know, and you're going to have FOMO if you're seeing a bunch of people, including influencers, post about, oh my gosh, the whole street smells like this candle. So yeah, I think we've got that. We had also another interesting example that I came across was KitchenAid, which, you know, of course, holidays, cooking is a big category. They have this New York City showroom where you can, it's like an outfitted, pretty much dining dinner party showroom where you could actually book it for yourself and host a dinner party there.