The right Black Friday depends on what you sell.

Black Friday falls on 27 November this year, with Cyber Monday on the 30th. Most brands will spend the next six weeks debating one question: how deep to go. It's the wrong first question. The right offer depends on how your customer buys, and a skincare customer, a footwear customer and a streetwear customer buy in very different ways.

Three categories, three risks

Last year Shopify merchants sold $14.6 billion over the Black Friday–Cyber Monday weekend, 27% more than in 2024, to more than 81 million shoppers. The demand is real. So is the cost of meeting it badly: a sitewide code that teaches customers to wait, stock that leaves in the wrong sizes, a brand that looks like every other email in the inbox.

Each category carries its own risk. Skincare gives away margin on products customers would have bought again anyway. Footwear sells out its core sizes and keeps the edges. Streetwear spends the one thing it sells beyond product: scarcity.

Skincare: sell the routine, not the discount

Skincare is a replenishment business. The customer who buys a serum in November buys it again in February, if the routine works. A Black Friday customer is worth their second order, not their first, so the goal is to acquire routines, not single units.

• Bundle by concern, not by bestseller. A three-step routine for dryness or redness at a set price does more than 25% off everything.
• Add a gift above your current AOV: a travel size of the product you want them to try next.
• Use tiered offers (spend €80, spend €120) that grow the basket instead of cutting the price.
• Open early access to subscribers and past customers 48 hours before the public offer.
• Have the post-purchase flow live before the sale: how-to-use on day 3, review request on day 14, replenishment timed to the size of the bottle.

ExampleA brand with a €48 vitamin C serum skips the sitewide 30%. Instead, it sells a Brightening Routine (cleanser, serum and SPF) for the price of two, with a mini eye cream on orders over €90. The customer gets more than a discount. The brand gets a full routine in the bathroom and a reason to come back in eight weeks.

Footwear: protect the size run

In footwear, the offer is half the strategy. The other half is the size curve. Discount a style sitewide and the core sizes go first: 38 to 40 in women's, 42 to 44 in men's. In January you're left with 35s and 46s, and a markdown problem bigger than the one you started with.

Returns are the second trap. Shoes already come back more than most categories, and promotional orders come back more often. A discount that doubles orders and doubles returns hasn't doubled anything.

• Discount by style and by size availability, not sitewide. Put the offer on broken size runs and seasonal colours; keep core models at full price.
• Protect bestsellers with value instead of price: a care kit, a second pair of laces, extended exchanges.
• Make fit impossible to miss: a fit note on every product page and the size guide inside the gallery, not a link at the bottom.
• Show stock per size and hide sold-out sizes from filters, so shoppers only see what they can buy.
• Offer an exchange before a refund in the returns flow. Keep the revenue, fix the size.

ExampleA leather sneaker brand puts 30% off last season's colours and on styles with fewer than four sizes left. Its two core models stay at full price, with a free care kit and exchanges extended to 15 January. The old stock moves, and the bestsellers keep their price for the rest of the year.

Streetwear: make it a drop, not a sale

Streetwear sells product and access. A label that builds demand on limited runs can undo it in one weekend of 40% off, which is why many premium and independent streetwear brands sit Black Friday out. The ones that take part use the attention without the discount.

• Release a Black Friday drop at full price: a limited colourway or capsule, announced two weeks ahead.
• Gate it. Early access for email and SMS subscribers grows the list in November, not just the revenue.
• If stock needs to move, run an archive sale on its own page and its own date, away from the drop and the main collection.
• Prepare the store for the spike: a waiting room or password page, Shop Pay at checkout, and product pages that load fast on mobile.

ExampleA label releases 300 hoodies in a colour that won't return. They go live at 18:00 on Black Friday, and the list gets access an hour earlier. There's no code on the site. The week before, an archive sale clears last season under a separate URL. The brand gets the weekend's attention and keeps the price of everything that matters.

Before you pick a number

Whatever you sell, the order of work is the same. Fix conversion before adding spend: November traffic only pays if the store converts it. Check the product page, cart and checkout on mobile. Set up your Klaviyo flows before the campaign, not after. And decide what a Black Friday customer should do next, in December and in January.

The right Black Friday offer isn't the deepest one. It's the one that still makes sense in January.

With six weeks to go: decide the offer and the stock in weeks one and two, build bundles, pages and flows in weeks three and four, tease to your list in week five, then open early access before the public offer goes live.