December 1, 2025 • 6 mins
Shopify President Harley Finkelstein tells Bloomberg Technology that Black Friday sales surged 25% to $6.2 billion, driven by nearly 70 million shoppers, strong U.S. demand, rising cross-border orders and a shift toward home-focused buying this season. He speaks with hosts Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Despite some of that economic uncertainty, Spencer was talking about
disappointment over the size of discounts. US shoppers did open
their wallets on Black Friday, So what does that mean
for the month ahead. Harley Fingalstein, president of global commerce
company Shopify, is here with some good data, some good insights.
I mean where we ended it. There was Spencer, Harley,
(00:29):
the forecasters, the predictors say that this will be another
record shopping season in aggregate the data available to you.
What are you seeing? What are the trends?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah, you know, I heard what Spencer said there. I mean, look,
Friday was another record breaking Black Friday weekend. We saw
about six point two billion dollars in sales for Black Friday.
That's about twenty five percent from last year. We saw
peak sales of five point one million dollars per minuted
on Friday that happened around noon on Friday. That's up
from four point six million last year as well. And
(01:02):
if you pull up actually anyone can see this BFCM
dot shop, you can actually see global commerce happening right
now in real time. We are currently seeing about two
point five million dollars per sales in sales per minute,
about twenty five thousand orders per minute, and we've seen
just shy of seventy million unique shoppers buy from Shopify stores.
(01:23):
So it's certainly shipping up to be another great day.
And happy to go into some of the merchants and
some of the trends that we're seeing cross Shopify.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Harley, what I'd like to do is actually take a
sort of geographic breakdown because in the limited data that
we went through a spencer, I think we're recognizing different
speeds of great sharpicula.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
US versus Europe. Could we start there? Yeah? Sure.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I mean, look, if you look at top selling countries
across the world where Shopify sells, we have millions of
stores in places like the US, we power twelve percent
of all e commerce, so we have a really great
view of things. US, UK, Australia, Germany and Canada are
the top five. Look a top three selling cities you
see La New York and London in US alone, La
New York and San Francisco were the top three. The
(02:06):
other thing that we also saw is cross border, but
seventeen percent of orders were cross border orders, so shipped
to a different country as well. And then in terms
of top trending merchants that we saw, we saw Hatch
which is sort of this it's been called the Restore three,
which is this phone free alarm for kind of morning routines.
Crunch Labs has the sort of kids build it yourself
(02:27):
monthly toy subscription, brook linnen on their super Plush robe,
and then Bass has their weekend or travel bag as well.
So we're seeing across a bunch of different verticals do
really well.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
But a big thing.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Actually that we're seeing now is last year seemed to
be a lot to talk about getting outside gifts, were
about the products being sold, were about you know, things
like skiing or hiking.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We're camping. This year seems to be that home is
really you.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Know, the winner here where people are buying things for
their home, whether it's kitchens except for the kitchen, or
puzzles or blankets, but generally consumers are buying from brands
they love, and we're fortunate those brands are on Shopify.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
What does that cross border stat that's seventeen percent signal
to you? Is that growing? I mean, how does that
stand up to last year when perhaps Taris went such
a headwind.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, I mean it's what I think it means is
that consumers generally are somewhat geographically agnostic. They want to
buy from their favorite brands. You know, we heard from
Jim Shark they had their biggest Black Friday sale ever
online ag one Athletic Greens was a fifty percent brunt
Workware got an order every five seconds. So if you
think about where consumers are purchasing, they're buying from brands
they love the Voris, the figs, the Alo Yogas, the
(03:36):
on Runnings of the World, and I think they're agnostic
to where those are coming from.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The other thing that we're.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Seeing, which is really interesting, is that this really wasn't
just about discount this year.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
People shop brands, not channels.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
We're almost worrying living in sort of a post world
channel where you know, the consumers bounce from a TikTok
video to an AI agent, to a website to a store.
Even in video games like Roadblocks where Shoppi by powers commerce.
The brands that really won the weekend made the experience
feel the same everywhere they were, and that continues today.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Let's talk holly about the inevitable AI question.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Because you are like the global commerce company. You're helping
people be digitally native. How are they interacting therefore, in
this world of brands with various AI agents, whether their
own or whether they're external third party.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's still very very early, but
since January we've actually seen AI driven traffic on to
Shopify stores up about six x.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But we've been preparing for this for years.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
We've been laying the rails for AGENTI where alread we've
already anounced deals with Perplexity and more recently with chat GBT,
where brands on Shopify can sell directly in those conversations,
no links, no redirects, just sort of this very seamless
experience directly in the chat. And so I think we're
going to see a lot more of that. Now what
permutation eventually wins, we're not sure yet, but we'll be
(04:52):
ready for it. But the other side of it is
really interesting, which is that brands, the merchants themselves, are
using AI to support them on the biggest shopping season
we can of the year. So we have something called Sidekick,
which is the AI assistant built into Shopify, which knows
everything about merchant stores, knows everything about Shopify, and we've
seen over one hundred million conversations with Sidekick. So merchants
are able to do things like you know, design copyright
(05:14):
market create these incredible analytics dashboards where they can decide
where to spend in a much more sophisticated way. And
so it's giving smaller merchants a real leg up against
the bigger guys because this AI empowers them.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I want to go back to tariffs, Holly, but with
a slightly different way of asking the question. You can
look at overall spend, but the question we're asking ourselves
in the bloom Bag newsroom is our consumer is still
spending and getting less in return. So what are the
data sets that you're tracking the evidence that impact of
tariffs either through a diminished spend or same level of spend,
(05:48):
but you just get less for it.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
We actually measure, you know, both consumer confidence but also
consumer's appetite to spend at checkout and so far, I
mean as we speak right now, ed two point five
million dollars are going through check with every single minute.
So we've operated through all types of macro environments and
our focus is always the same, which is for merchants
and I think what we're seeing though, is that, you know,
whether during the pandemic, for example, we introduce tools like
(06:11):
you know, contact list delivery back in twenty twenty. Well,
now we're creating tools to help merchants navigate cross border
tariffs and navigate sort of some global uncertainty to make
sure they have everything they need.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So we're not complacent about this.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
We're tracking macro conditions, but so far Shopify merchants consistently
outperform the overall market, and we're seeing that that they're
they're you know, they have a lot of buyers.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Right now, and I think we'll see great to have
some time with the president of Shopify. What a weekend
it's been for you, I'm sure
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Despite some of that economic uncertainty, Spencer was talking about
disappointment over the size of discounts. US shoppers did open
their wallets on Black Friday, So what does that mean
for the month ahead. Harley Fingalstein, president of global commerce
company Shopify, is here with some good data, some good insights.
I mean where we ended it. There was Spencer, Harley,
(00:29):
the forecasters, the predictors say that this will be another
record shopping season in aggregate the data available to you.
What are you seeing? What are the trends?
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yeah, you know, I heard what Spencer said there. I mean, look,
Friday was another record breaking Black Friday weekend. We saw
about six point two billion dollars in sales for Black Friday.
That's about twenty five percent from last year. We saw
peak sales of five point one million dollars per minuted
on Friday that happened around noon on Friday. That's up
from four point six million last year as well. And
(01:02):
if you pull up actually anyone can see this BFCM
dot shop, you can actually see global commerce happening right
now in real time. We are currently seeing about two
point five million dollars per sales in sales per minute,
about twenty five thousand orders per minute, and we've seen
just shy of seventy million unique shoppers buy from Shopify stores.
(01:23):
So it's certainly shipping up to be another great day.
And happy to go into some of the merchants and
some of the trends that we're seeing cross Shopify.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Harley, what I'd like to do is actually take a
sort of geographic breakdown because in the limited data that
we went through a spencer, I think we're recognizing different
speeds of great sharpicula.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
US versus Europe. Could we start there? Yeah? Sure.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
I mean, look, if you look at top selling countries
across the world where Shopify sells, we have millions of
stores in places like the US, we power twelve percent
of all e commerce, so we have a really great
view of things. US, UK, Australia, Germany and Canada are
the top five. Look a top three selling cities you
see La New York and London in US alone, La
New York and San Francisco were the top three. The
(02:06):
other thing that we also saw is cross border, but
seventeen percent of orders were cross border orders, so shipped
to a different country as well. And then in terms
of top trending merchants that we saw, we saw Hatch
which is sort of this it's been called the Restore three,
which is this phone free alarm for kind of morning routines.
Crunch Labs has the sort of kids build it yourself
(02:27):
monthly toy subscription, brook linnen on their super Plush robe,
and then Bass has their weekend or travel bag as well.
So we're seeing across a bunch of different verticals do
really well.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
But a big thing.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Actually that we're seeing now is last year seemed to
be a lot to talk about getting outside gifts, were
about the products being sold, were about you know, things
like skiing or hiking.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
We're camping. This year seems to be that home is
really you.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
Know, the winner here where people are buying things for
their home, whether it's kitchens except for the kitchen, or
puzzles or blankets, but generally consumers are buying from brands
they love, and we're fortunate those brands are on Shopify.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
What does that cross border stat that's seventeen percent signal
to you? Is that growing? I mean, how does that
stand up to last year when perhaps Taris went such
a headwind.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
Yeah, I mean it's what I think it means is
that consumers generally are somewhat geographically agnostic. They want to
buy from their favorite brands. You know, we heard from
Jim Shark they had their biggest Black Friday sale ever
online ag one Athletic Greens was a fifty percent brunt
Workware got an order every five seconds. So if you
think about where consumers are purchasing, they're buying from brands
they love the Voris, the figs, the Alo Yogas, the
(03:36):
on Runnings of the World, and I think they're agnostic
to where those are coming from.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
The other thing that we're.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Seeing, which is really interesting, is that this really wasn't
just about discount this year.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
People shop brands, not channels.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
We're almost worrying living in sort of a post world
channel where you know, the consumers bounce from a TikTok
video to an AI agent, to a website to a store.
Even in video games like Roadblocks where Shoppi by powers commerce.
The brands that really won the weekend made the experience
feel the same everywhere they were, and that continues today.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Let's talk holly about the inevitable AI question.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Because you are like the global commerce company. You're helping
people be digitally native. How are they interacting therefore, in
this world of brands with various AI agents, whether their
own or whether they're external third party.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Yeah, I mean, look, it's still very very early, but
since January we've actually seen AI driven traffic on to
Shopify stores up about six x.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
But we've been preparing for this for years.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
We've been laying the rails for AGENTI where alread we've
already anounced deals with Perplexity and more recently with chat GBT,
where brands on Shopify can sell directly in those conversations,
no links, no redirects, just sort of this very seamless
experience directly in the chat. And so I think we're
going to see a lot more of that. Now what
permutation eventually wins, we're not sure yet, but we'll be
(04:52):
ready for it. But the other side of it is
really interesting, which is that brands, the merchants themselves, are
using AI to support them on the biggest shopping season
we can of the year. So we have something called Sidekick,
which is the AI assistant built into Shopify, which knows
everything about merchant stores, knows everything about Shopify, and we've
seen over one hundred million conversations with Sidekick. So merchants
are able to do things like you know, design copyright
(05:14):
market create these incredible analytics dashboards where they can decide
where to spend in a much more sophisticated way. And
so it's giving smaller merchants a real leg up against
the bigger guys because this AI empowers them.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I want to go back to tariffs, Holly, but with
a slightly different way of asking the question. You can
look at overall spend, but the question we're asking ourselves
in the bloom Bag newsroom is our consumer is still
spending and getting less in return. So what are the
data sets that you're tracking the evidence that impact of
tariffs either through a diminished spend or same level of spend,
(05:48):
but you just get less for it.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
We actually measure, you know, both consumer confidence but also
consumer's appetite to spend at checkout and so far, I
mean as we speak right now, ed two point five
million dollars are going through check with every single minute.
So we've operated through all types of macro environments and
our focus is always the same, which is for merchants
and I think what we're seeing though, is that, you know,
whether during the pandemic, for example, we introduce tools like
(06:11):
you know, contact list delivery back in twenty twenty. Well,
now we're creating tools to help merchants navigate cross border
tariffs and navigate sort of some global uncertainty to make
sure they have everything they need.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
So we're not complacent about this.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
We're tracking macro conditions, but so far Shopify merchants consistently
outperform the overall market, and we're seeing that that they're
they're you know, they have a lot of buyers.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Right now, and I think we'll see great to have
some time with the president of Shopify. What a weekend
it's been for you, I'm sure
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