Black Friday still moves real money.
Shopify reported $11.5B in BFCM sales in 2024, up 24% year-over-year, with the average discount at 27% across categories and even deeper in beauty and wellness. Black Friday works. Dashboards light up. Founders finally feel like the year “hit.”
But under those topline numbers is a quieter truth every operator knows:
To get that revenue, you swallowed steep discounts and rising ad costs.
Holiday performance data from Meta and independent agencies shows CPMs up ~18% YoY, CPCs up ~23%, and ROAS compressing as every brand piles into the same week with similar offers. (Marketing Brew / Meta holiday recap, Tinuiti Holiday Performance Benchmarks)
So yes, Black Friday delivers a spike.
It’s just expensive, high-effort, one-weekend revenue.
And that’s where the contrast with off-price becomes impossible to ignore.
While DTC Brands Scrambled, Off-Price Saw Some of Its Strongest Foot Traffic
During Thanksgiving week 2024, Placer.ai tracked a surge across off-price banners:
TJ Maxx: +7.1% YoY foot traffic
Marshalls: +6.2% YoY
Sierra: +5.4% YoY
None of them ran a special Black Friday sale.
No promo-code gymnastics.
No last-minute “extended” deals.
Consumers showed up because off-price is a standing value proposition: the deal is built-in, the discovery is real, and the trip feels worth it without an extra campaign.
And this isn’t just a one-weekend trick. The same Placer.ai analysis showed off-price banners posting consistent year-over-year traffic growth every month of 2024, not just in November. (Off-Price Ahead of the 2024 Holiday Season)
Layer on their work on the “elongation” of the holiday season — shoppers spreading purchases across the whole quarter instead of one weekend — and off-price is one of the biggest beneficiaries. (Holiday Elongation Effect)
In other words:
Black Friday is a moment. Off-price is a machine.
Black Friday Works. But Only Once a Year. Off-Price Works Every Month.
But there’s an uncomfortable reality underneath: you pour weeks of work and budget into one performance window, and you can’t run that play twelve times a year.
To make BFCM work, most teams overhaul creative, rebuild funnels, line up creators, crank up ad spend into the most expensive auction of the year, staff up support, and sign off on discounts they’d never accept in March. The revenue is real, but it’s locked to a single weekend.
In off-price, the physics are different.
Velocity comes from existing in-store foot traffic, stable value bands (that $6.99–$12.99 beauty sweet spot, predictable wellness and F&B ranges), engineered formats (bundles, duos, trial sizes), and cultural momentum spilling over from TikTok and social.
There’s no algorithm to appease, no ad auction to outbid, no campaign calendar to reinvent. You’re plugging into a channel where the shopper is already primed to discover, compare, and try.
Why Modern Brands Are Entering Off-Price on Purpose
Founders’ biggest fear used to be: “Will off-price cheapen my brand?”
Walk a TJ Maxx or Marshalls in Q4 and that fear looks outdated.
Across November and December, aisles were lined with:
BYOMA
Poppi
Bioma
Goli
functional hydration sticks
TikTok-famous scalp and hair treatments
K-beauty and barrier-care products
pet wellness and premium treats
These are not quiet liquidation labels.
They’re brands with:
national retail distribution
TikTok and Amazon velocity
investors who care deeply about optics
marketing teams who think in omnichannel terms, not just DTC
Their behavior tracks with the broader consumer shift. According to McKinsey’s US Consumer Pulse, 76% of U.S. consumers say they’ve permanently shifted toward more cost-conscious purchasing, with off-price and value formats among the primary beneficiaries.
At the same time, Earnest Analytics has shown that TikTok-driven categories grow 20–30% faster in brick-and-mortar than non-TikTok peers. When those products show up in off-price, you get a powerful “TikTok → TJX” loop: demand is created online, then harvested in-store — at full off-price value, not discounted DTC margins.
So when you see BYOMA or Poppi in off-price during Q4, it’s not a mistake.
It’s a strategy.
Packaging Clarity + Value Bands = Predictable Velocity
Off-price movement isn’t magic. It’s structured.
Circana’s beauty and wellness research repeatedly shows that simple, benefit-led packaging with one strong claim and clear hierarchy outperforms cluttered claim stacks in-store. Shoppers reward products they can “get” at a glance.
Combine that with stable value bands at off-price (e.g., beauty in that $6.99–$12.99 range, wellness often in $9.99–$16.99, functional F&B at $4.99–$9.99), and both brands and buyers can forecast movement with far more confidence than a one-weekend DTC sale.
If you:
hit the right price band,
lead with a clear outcome,
make the pack feel like a “smart grab,”
and ride a real consumer trend…
You’re participating in a system designed for throughput.
And because Placer.ai’s data shows recurring monthly traffic growth, that throughput repeats.
The Real Missed Window: Q1 Reset Season
Most founders fixate on Q4. But from an off-price perspective, Q1 is the real unlock.
After gifting season, shoppers flip into reset mode:
wellness
hydration
supplements
sleep and recovery
self-care
skincare
functional F&B
Circana’s health and wellness trends show sharp lifts in these categories every January, often 15–20% higher demand versus baseline, as consumers shift spending from others to themselves.
Off-price sits right in the middle of that:
value-led
discovery-based
wellness-heavy
“new year, new routine” friendly
This is the period where off-price can behave like “monthly Black Friday” for the right SKUs, without discounts, without ad spend, and without chaos.
And unlike BFCM, it’s not a 72-hour sprint.
It’s a full-season play.
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