Ecommerce Growth Just Hit its Slowest Rate Since 2022

Your Weekly DTC Industry Roundup

Ecommerce growth is slowing to rates we haven't seen since 2022.

Yet somehow, orders jumped 147% YoY while the majority of brands saw almost none of that growth. The top 5% of DTC brands captured 54% of total order growth, meaning the gap between winners and everyone else keeps widening.

Meanwhile, Shopify just opened the doors to agentic commerce for every brand, regardless of platform. AI agents are becoming the new storefronts, and the infrastructure to sell inside every AI conversation is now live.

And if your January forecast is trending the wrong direction? You're definitely not alone.

Here's what happened this week:

• US ecommerce sales growth in Q3 hit its slowest rate in 10 quarters at 5.2% YoY
• Ecommerce orders jumped 147% in 2025, but growth stayed concentrated at the top 5% of brands
• Shoppers are clicking less, but converting 51% more when they do engage
• Shopify launched the Universal Commerce Protocol with Google, enabling native checkout inside AI Mode and Gemini
• Non-Shopify brands can now access Shopify Catalog and sell through agentic storefronts
• CFOs at 7-9 figure brands are gathering to salvage busted Q1 forecasts before February hits

Let's dig in.

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Market Reality Check

Ecommerce Growth Just Hit Its Slowest Rate Since 2022

US ecommerce sales growth in Q3 2025 slowed to 5.2% year over year.

That's the slowest rate in 10 quarters, according to Digital Commerce 360's analysis of Department of Commerce data.

It's also the third consecutive quarter of sub-6% growth, something that hasn't happened in America since 2009.

Total ecommerce sales in Q3 reached $299.64 billion, up just 2.2% from Q2's $292.93 billion. Meanwhile, ecommerce penetration hit 22.5% of total retail sales, slightly up from Q2's 22%.

But here's what matters more than the top-line slowdown: the gap between ecommerce growth and offline retail growth is shrinking. Ecommerce grew 5.2% while offline retail grew 4.1%. That's barely a percentage point of separation.

Ecommerce represented 26.8% of total year-over-year retail growth in Q3. That's only slightly more than Q2 (26.5%) and significantly less than Q1 (33.5%). In fact, 2025 marks the first year with quarters where ecommerce's share of total retail growth fell below 30% since Q2 2022.

"The continued slowdown is due in large part to deepening worries about high prices, especially among middle and lower-class consumers, and the sustained negative impacts of wide-ranging tariffs," said Jon Love, research data manager at Digital Commerce 360.

Translation: consumers are still spending, but they're being way more selective about where and how they spend. Price sensitivity is real. Tariffs are compressing margins. And the days of easy ecommerce growth are definitively over.

Q3 also marked the 17th consecutive quarter in which ecommerce sales grew less than 10% year over year. Before Q2 2021, that kind of single-digit growth had only happened once going back to 2010.

The takeaway? Ecommerce isn't dying. It's maturing. And the brands that can't figure out how to grow profitably in a slower-growth environment are going to get left behind.

Read full breakdown

Winner Takes Most

Orders Jumped 147%, But Only the Top 5% Saw Real Growth

Ecommerce orders in the US jumped 147% year over year in 2025, according to new data from Omnisend.

Sounds incredible, right?

Except the top 5% of US ecommerce brands accounted for 54% of total order growth.

The rest of the market? Fighting over scraps.

Omnisend's report analyzed ecommerce performance across 150,000 brands and found that while overall order volume skyrocketed, growth was massively concentrated among a small group of winners. The gap between the brands that figured it out and everyone else keeps widening.

And it's not just about who got the most orders. It's about who earned customer trust in an environment where shoppers became significantly more selective.

Shoppers engaged less frequently with marketing overall in 2025. But when they did engage, they were far more likely to convert and spend more. Purchase likelihood rose 51% compared to last year, while average order value climbed 22%.

So what separated the winners from everyone else?

It wasn't more emails. It was better-timed ones.

Behavior-based automated emails drove 25% of total email revenue while accounting for just 1.7% of total sends. Relevance beats volume. Again.

"After years of inflation and uncertainty, people were still willing to spend, but they were much more intentional about where they spent their money," said Marty Bauer, ecommerce expert at Omnisend. "Brands that were able to react quickly to customer behavior had a clear advantage, while others found it harder to keep up."

That intentionality showed up across multiple consumer studies. A June 2025 report from Lightspeed Commerce found that 92% of consumers considered themselves at least "somewhat intentional" shoppers, with 40% identifying as very intentional.

And while ecommerce is functional, it's not exactly fun. A separate 2025 Criteo study found that more than 3 in 4 consumers described ecommerce as "functional," but not enjoyable.

The brands winning in 2025 figured out how to be both relevant and responsive. They personalized experiences. They reacted quickly to behavior. They didn't just blast more emails hoping something stuck.

Everyone else kept doing what used to work and wondered why it stopped.

Read more here

Finance & Forecasting

How To Fix Your January Forecast Before February

It's Week 3 of January and a lot of finance leaders are already staring at forecasts trending in the wrong direction.

Common Thread Collective is hosting a live CFO summit on January 21st specifically for 7-9 figure brand finance leaders trying to figure out how to salvage Q1 before it's too late.

The core question: Your January forecast is off. Now what?

Most teams waste weeks diagnosing why performance is down, then more time debating what to do about it, and by the time they take action it's February and the damage is done.

The webinar promises to show how to identify why performance is off in under an hour, isolate the signal that matters most, and take immediate corrective action. The focus is on connecting forecasting, measurement, and creative output to accelerate decisions.

This matters because mid-month misses don't have to become mid-quarter disasters. But only if you have systems that surface problems fast and workflows that translate insight into action.

The session is partnered with Fulfil, an ERP that connects operations and finance with real-time visibility. The pitch is eliminating the lag between what's happening in your business and what your finance team knows about it.

Finance leaders who can move from "we're down" to "here's exactly why and here's what we're doing about it" within 48 hours will separate themselves this year.

Save your seat

Agentic Commerce

Shopify Just Opened the Door to Selling Inside Every AI Conversation

Shopify just made it possible for any merchant to sell directly inside AI conversations, regardless of what platform they're on.

They announced the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), a new open standard co-developed with Google to bring commerce to AI agents at scale. Native shopping on Google surfaces is rolling out soon, which means Shopify merchants can sell directly in AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app.

They also updated their Microsoft Copilot integration with a new embedded checkout experience. These integrations, plus ChatGPT, are now managed centrally from the Shopify Admin through Agentic Storefronts.

But here's the bigger move: Shopify Catalog is now open to every brand through their new Agentic plan. This means brands on any platform can use Shopify's infrastructure to sell on AI channels without needing a Shopify online store.

Non-Shopify merchants can now list their products in Shopify Catalog, a comprehensive collection of billions of products that uses specialized LLMs to categorize, enrich, and standardize product data. This enables them to sell in AI channels, the Shop app, and all future partners of Shopify Catalog.

UCP is designed to make integrations fast and flexible to account for every retailer's requirements. It allows agents to represent critical checkout flows, including discount codes, loyalty credentials, subscription billing cadences, and selling terms like final sale or pre-order timing, all in chat.

"Shopify has a history of building checkouts for millions of unique retail businesses. We have taken everything we've seen over the decades to make UCP a robust commerce standard that can scale," says Vanessa Lee, VP at Shopify.

The protocol works with any payment processor, including Shopify Payments, and supports fully conversational purchasing experiences, embedded checkouts in apps, or web-based commerce flows.

"The shift to agentic commerce will require a shared language across the ecosystem, and the Universal Commerce Protocol provides that framework," says Ashish Gupta, VP/GM of Merchant Shopping at Google. "Through our collaboration with partners like Shopify we're ensuring the protocol is interoperable and ready to meet the evolving demands of retailers and their customers."

Brands like Monos, Gymshark, and Everlane will soon sell directly in AI Mode in Google Search and the Gemini app. Merchants like Keen and Pura Vida are using Copilot Checkout to reach their customers.

"At Monos, we're excited about agentic shopping because it enables us to meet customers where they already are," said Victor Tam, CEO and Co-Founder of Monos. "It's a new way for our story and product details to show up at the exact moment someone is asking real questions with real intent, in a format that feels helpful, not intrusive."

Agentic commerce transforms every conversational interface into a place to discover and buy from brands globally. Inside search, assistants, productivity tools, feeds, and even emerging surfaces that are still taking shape.

"We're excited to partner with Shopify as innovators in AI-driven commerce, which we believe represents the future of how people shop," says Sam Buckingham, Director of Global Digital Product at KEEN. "As one of the first Shopify brands to use Copilot Checkout, we're proud to help lead the industry in defining this new sales channel."

Every surface that can hold a conversation, make a plan, and take actions becomes commerce-capable. And Shopify just made it accessible to everyone.

Learn more about it here

Final Thoughts

What This Means for Founders

Ecommerce growth is slowing to rates we haven't seen in years.

The days of double-digit growth across the board are over. The brands that figure out how to grow profitably in a slower-growth environment will separate themselves from everyone else.

Orders are up 147%, but growth is massively concentrated among the top 5% of brands.

The gap between winners and everyone else keeps widening.

The difference isn't volume. It's relevance. Behavior-based automation drove 25% of email revenue while accounting for just 1.7% of sends. Timing beats frequency.

Shoppers are engaging less, but converting more when they do. Purchase likelihood is up 51%.

Average order value is up 22%. Customers are more intentional than ever. They're not browsing.

They're buying with purpose. The brands that can respond quickly to customer behavior have a clear advantage.

January forecast misses don't have to become Q1 disasters.

But only if you have systems that surface problems within days, not weeks, and workflows that translate insight into action fast enough to actually matter.

Finance leaders who can diagnose and act within 48 hours will separate themselves this year.

Agentic commerce is here.

Shopify just opened the infrastructure to sell inside every AI conversation, regardless of what platform you're on.

AI agents are becoming the new storefronts.

The brands that optimize product data for machine interpretation and show up inside these conversations will own the next wave of discovery.

None of this is easy.

But the operational gaps separating high-performing brands from everyone else are becoming more obvious.

Speed of diagnosis and speed of response will determine who recovers from rough starts and who spends the year playing catch-up.