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As we move into the first weeks of January, one thing is clear: the 2025 holiday season didn’t just break sales records — it fundamentally reshaped how ecommerce operates.
Consumers spent more, shopped smarter, and increasingly relied on AI-powered experiences, while retailers were forced to balance aggressive growth with margin pressure and operational complexity. The result? A clear signal that 2026 will be defined by intelligent, agent-led commerce at scale.
Record-Breaking Growth, With New Realities
Online sales reached unprecedented levels during the 2025 holiday period, climbing 6.8% year-on-year to $257.8 billion, with some estimates placing US online spend even higher. Shoppers showed remarkable resilience, particularly in the final weeks of December, driving sustained momentum right through year-end.
Two structural shifts stood out:
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Mobile dominance continued to accelerate, with over 56% of online transactions now happening on mobile devices.
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Peak demand became more intense, with 25 separate days exceeding $4 billion in online spend, stretching operational capacity across fulfilment, customer service, and returns.
For brands, this wasn’t just about traffic — it was about whether systems, data, and operations could keep up.
Growth at Any Cost? The Margin Challenge
Sales growth was powered by deep discounting across key categories, particularly electronics, apparel, and sporting goods. While discounts drove conversion, they also compressed margins, making pricing intelligence, inventory discipline, and operational efficiency non-negotiable.
This is where many retailers felt the strain. Winning demand without sacrificing profitability now requires:
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Real-time pricing optimisation
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Clear visibility of landed costs and margins
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Tight coordination between marketing, stock, and fulfilment
The Rise of Agentic Commerce
Perhaps the most defining shift of the season was the role of AI. In 2025, AI moved from experimentation to execution.
AI-driven recommendations and decisioning influenced roughly 20% of all retail sales, while traffic from third-party AI discovery channels surged. Crucially, shoppers arriving via AI assistants converted significantly more often than those coming from traditional social channels, a sign that discovery is becoming higher-intent, not just higher-volume.
But AI’s impact wasn’t limited to the front end. Agentic systems handled a surge in operational tasks, from returns to shipping updates, enabling retailers to scale without proportionally scaling headcount. The holiday season wasn’t just bigger, it was more automated, more efficient, and more intelligent.
What This Means for Brands in 2026
The message heading into 2026 is clear: growth will belong to brands that can connect demand generation with operational execution.
Winning ecommerce strategies now require:
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Personalised, AI-driven customer journeys
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High-intent discovery across marketplaces, DTC, and emerging AI channels
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Margin-aware pricing and promotion strategies
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Seamless fulfilment and cross-border readiness
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Infrastructure that can flex under peak demand without breaking
Where Luzern Fits In
At Luzern eCommerce, this shift validates what we’ve been building toward: a fully integrated, end-to-end eCommerce operating model.
Our unified platform brings together:
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Marketplace and DTC execution, from Amazon to global marketplaces and webstores
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Merchant of Record capabilities, removing friction from international expansion
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Advanced pricing, inventory, and margin optimisation, designed for high-pressure peak periods
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AI-enabled insights and automation, helping brands act faster and smarter across the customer lifecycle
In a world of agentic commerce, success isn’t about adopting isolated tools ,it’s about orchestrating data, technology, and operations as one system.
Looking Ahead
The 2025 holiday season marked a turning point. Ecommerce is no longer just about selling online, it’s about building intelligent, resilient systems that can scale profitably in real time.
As brands plan for 2026, the question isn’t whether AI, automation, and marketplaces will shape growth, it’s whether your eCommerce infrastructure is ready to support them.
At Luzern, we’re helping brands answer that question with confidence.