$14.6B in 4 Days (How it Actually Happened)

Your Weekly DTC Industry Roundup

BFCM 2025 just wrapped and the numbers are … actually pretty wild.

Shopify merchants crushed $14.6 billion in sales. TikTok Shop blew past $500M in four days. AI shopping assistants fielded over a million conversations. And the whole "online vs. in-store" debate? Yeah, that one's basically over.

But here's what's MORE interesting than the raw numbers …

The how behind those sales is changing faster than most founders realize.

Here's what went down over the holiday weekend:

• Shopify merchants hit $14.6B in BFCM sales, up 27% YoY with 81M+ customers buying
• Ecommerce grew 10.4% while brick-and-mortar stores limped along at 1.7% growth
• AI shopping agents saw 46% conversion lifts and fielded questions about assembly instructions, waterproof ratings, and FAA approvals
• TikTok Shop drove $500M+ in sales with 50% more shoppers than last year
• Apparel and activewear dominated sales despite tariff chaos earlier this year
• Finance teams are scrambling to connect marketing calendars with actual forecasts (because apparently that's still broken)
• And 147 brands representing $127M in revenue reveal what ACTUALLY worked this BFCM (exclusive podcast breakdown)

Let's connect some dots …

Strategic Blind Spots

Finance Teams Still Can't Connect Marketing Plans to Revenue Forecasts

Here's an uncomfortable truth most founders don't want to admit:

Your finance team has no idea what marketing is actually planning to do next quarter.

Common Thread Collective is hosting a live session for CFOs on December 17th specifically to address this problem. Because apparently, the bridge between marketing calendars and financial forecasts is still completely broken at most 7-9 figure brands.

Finance builds models. Marketing executes campaigns. And the two rarely connect until someone's scrambling to explain why actuals missed projections by 30%.

The webinar is teaching CFOs how to "turn marketing calendars into financial forecasts." Which sounds basic … but clearly isn't, given how many brands are still flying blind.

This matters because:

If your finance team doesn't know that you're planning a major promo in Q2, or scaling back email volume in January, or testing a new offer structure … their forecasts are just educated guesses.

And when forecasts are wrong, bad decisions follow. Inventory gets misallocated. Hiring plans get delayed. Board meetings get awkward.

The fix isn't complicated. It's just uncomfortable because it requires marketing and finance to actually talk to each other like adults.

If you're a CFO (or a founder wearing the CFO hat), this one's probably worth checking out.

Reserve your seat here

Channel Wars

Ecommerce Grew 6X Faster Than Stores on Black Friday

Online sales jumped 10.4%. In-store traffic? Up a measly 1.7%.

The gap between digital and physical retail performance isn't closing. It's accelerating.

Mastercard's SpendingPulse data shows that ecommerce is now growing six times faster than brick-and-mortar on the biggest shopping day of the year.

Store traffic actually declined 5.3% over the Black Friday weekend, per RetailNext. The Midwest got hit hardest — partly due to a snowstorm, but mostly because people would rather shop from their couch.

Target tried luring people in with exclusive tote bags. Some locations saw 500 people waiting in line. But even with creative giveaways and doorbuster deals, the overall trend is clear.

Physical retail isn't dead. But it's not growing either.

Meanwhile, apparel crushed it online with 6.1% growth. Active apparel and luxury accessories led the pack — interesting considering how beat up the category got earlier this year with tariff uncertainty.

The takeaway isn't "close all your stores." It's that if your growth strategy still assumes people prefer shopping in person … you're building on a foundation that's actively eroding.

Read full details

Ai Commerce

Shoppers Asked AI a Million Questions Before Buying Anything

AI didn't just assist with shopping this BFCM. It became the new sales floor expert.

Bluecore analyzed over 1 million AI shopping conversations during the holiday weekend and found something fascinating:

Saturday saw MORE questions asked than Black Friday itself.

278,911 questions on Saturday vs. 254,781 on Friday.

People weren't just impulse buying on Black Friday and bouncing. They were researching, comparing, and validating purchases throughout the entire weekend.

The questions weren't simple either. Shoppers asked about assembly requirements for furniture. Skill level matching for sporting goods ("What skill level is this ski for?"). FAA approval status for car seats.

This is high-intent, high-stakes decision-making. And AI is handling it.

The conversion data backs it up: AI-powered shopping assistance drove a 46% conversion surge compared to baseline. Question widget views jumped 50% on Black Friday alone.

Here's why this matters:

Your product pages aren't competing with other product pages anymore. They're competing with conversational AI that can answer nuanced questions in real-time without making someone dig through PDFs or email support.

If your site can't answer "Is this waterproof?" or "Will this fit a 6-year-old?" instantly … you're already behind.

Watch the breakdown

Platform Performance

Shopify Merchants Just Had Their Best Weekend Ever

$14.6 billion in sales. 81 million customers. Peak sales hitting $5.1M per minute.

Shopify's BFCM numbers aren't just big … they're 27% bigger than last year.

Which means independent brands are officially eating into the Amazon/big-box dominance that everyone assumed was unstoppable.

Here's what stands out:

Nearly 95,000 merchants had their best sales day EVER. And 15,800 entrepreneurs made their first sale on the platform.

Cross-border orders represented 16% of total volume — proving that DTC isn't just a U.S. game anymore.

Shop Pay conversions jumped 39% year-over-year, with 32% of all orders going through the checkout product. Turns out when you remove friction from buying, people actually … buy more. Shocking.

Average cart price hit $114.70 (about the same as last year when you adjust for currency). So customers aren't just buying more often — they're still willing to spend.

The categories that crushed it? Cosmetics, activewear, fitness gear. Basically everything tariffs were supposed to destroy six months ago.

Bottom line: If you're still debating whether to "bet" on your own DTC store or just wholesale everything to Amazon … the market's already answered that question for you.

See more details here

Social Commerce

TikTok Shop Blew Past $500M in Four Days

TikTok Shop generated over $500 million in sales during the four-day BFCM period.

That's 50% more shoppers than last year's campaign.

Live Shopping was the secret weapon. Sellers hosting livestreams saw 84% sales growth compared to last year. Over 760,000 livestream sessions generated 1.6 billion views.

People aren't just passively scrolling and buying anymore. They're tuning in to watch creators unbox, demonstrate, and sell products in real-time.

Kim Kardashian hosted her first live shopping event. PoP Mart's SKULLPANDA plushies sold out. Creator affiliates posted nearly 10 million shoppable videos during the campaign.

This isn't a trend. It's a fundamental shift in how discovery-based commerce works.

83% of TikTok Shop shoppers say they discover new products on the platform (per GlobalData). Which means if you're not showing up in feeds … you're invisible to a massive segment of buyers actively looking to spend.

Brands with $10M+ in annual revenue grew their TikTok Shop sales 76% year-over-year.

So this isn't just for scrappy startups testing new channels. It's working at scale for established brands willing to show up where their customers actually are.

See more here

Podcast

47 Brands, $127M: What Really Worked on BFCM This Year

In this episode of The DTC Hotline, we unpack what actually happened during BFCM across 147 brands, representing $127M in revenue and $25M in media spend.

We break down:

• The macro story: 8–10% YoY growth, flat order volume, rising AOV, and the surge in BNPL
• Why UGC video and 3–4x more creative output became the unlock in a post-Advantage+ world
• The shock appearance of AppLovin as the #3 channel in our dataset
• The “tight window” offer strategies that outperformed month-long promotions
• How brands used novelty, micro-peaks, and parachute offers to rescue underperforming days
• Hour-by-hour media pacing: why BFCM requires real-time decision making
• Tactical stories from accounts that flipped their day by switching offers or duplicating campaigns
• The emerging pattern: more spend, more creative, less fixed cost → the only way through 2025+

Plus: Luke and Tony give their unfiltered takes on Dubai, what felt surreal, and what they learned from meeting the accelerator team IRL.

If you want the real BFCM insights—not recycled takes—this is the recap brands are using to plan 2025.

Watch the latest episode here

Final Thoughts

What This Actually Means

BFCM 2025 wasn't just about big sales numbers. The mechanics of how those sales happened are shifting.

AI is handling pre-purchase research that used to require customer service teams or abandoned carts.

TikTok is turning product discovery into entertainment.

Shopify's proving that independent brands can compete directly with Amazon without getting crushed.

Ecommerce isn't just outpacing stores anymore. It's lapping them.

The brands that won this weekend understood something important: Shopping isn't a transaction anymore. It's a conversation. It's a livestream. It's an AI assistant answering questions at 2 AM when someone's comparing products in bed.

If your site still operates like a digital catalog where people browse and checkout... you're competing with a completely different experience model.

And the finance/marketing disconnect? That's not a "nice to have" fix. It's a structural weakness that'll cost you in 2026 when everyone's trying to forecast their way through whatever economic weirdness comes next.

The good news: None of this requires you to reinvent your entire business overnight.

Start small. Test AI chat on your highest-traffic product pages. Run a few TikTok livestreams and see what happens. Get your CFO and CMO in the same room to map Q1 promos against revenue targets.

And if you want the REAL tactical breakdown of what worked across 147 brands this BFCM … listen to the DTC Hotline episode. That's where the actual playbook is.

The brands that figure this stuff out early will have an unfair advantage. The ones that wait for "best practices" to emerge will be playing catch-up for years.

Your move.