This year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) exceeded industry expectations and consumers hit new spending milestones. Flexport hit an all time high—with the most orders ever received during Cyber 5 (Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday), and a record-breaking number of units across Black Friday and Cyber Monday orders. Most notably, Black Friday was our biggest day in Flexport Fulfillment’s history for units ordered.

2024 Black Friday & Cyber Monday Wins

Shoppers spent a record $10.8 billion online on Black Friday, up more than 10% versus last Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics. Cyber Monday broke records as well, with shoppers spending more than $13 billion.

Flexport customers in our network beat that growth year-over-year, with orders up 12% on Black Friday and total Cyber 5 orders up 17%. Flexport’s operations team is working to ensure world-class execution, and our busiest shipping days are ahead of us this week. Our team is moving fast to make inventory sellable as quickly as possible with a one-day receive time. Plus, all units inbounded by our cutoff date were received on time. It’s still a bit early to report, but based on Thanksgiving week’s delivery performance, we are trending to a 98% on-time delivery rate. Our goal is to provide customers with the highest support from operations to customer support. We’re proud to share that our customer support interactions have received a 95% CSAT during BFCM.

One of our top shipping customers this BFCM is Boxbollen. “This is our first year shipping with Flexport during Peak, and they have been crucial to our success as we ship well over one million units over a few short weeks,” shared Marcus Strömberg, Head of Supply Chain at Boxbollen. “We are shipping across multiple channels, including DTC and Amazon, and [Flexport is] working with us hand in hand to ensure we get our orders out on time and avoid Amazon penalties. Their account team has been best-in-class, and we feel like they're an extension of our team.”

Along with Boxbollen, some of our other top shipping customers include Blenders, Kizik, and Wyze. These customers saw incredible growth during BFCM, propelled by robust marketing activations, strong promotions, and a multi-channel selling strategy. Blenders offered a tiered promotion, plus a sweepstakes for consumers featuring a chance to win $24,000. Kizik offered up to 50% off its line of hands-free shoes and boots, with its winter shoes being especially popular. Wyze saw lifts across its sales channels—and became one of the top 25 most-sold Amazon items.

According to Olivia Liu, Chief of Staff at Wyze, “Wyze launched its lowest-ever promotion, the $9.99 Wyze OG camera deal on Thanksgiving Day, which sold out at record speed across all channels. The deal shattered sales records, driving unprecedented velocity, conversions, and units sold. During Black Friday week, Wyze became the #1 best-selling camera on Amazon, while our DTC site saw a 5x traffic increase, and the Wyze OG camera was the top-selling item on TikTok Shop. Flexport played a critical role in expediting the inbound shipments of our hero SKUs, helping us minimize stockouts and meet this extraordinary demand. We’re incredibly grateful for their support in making this a record-breaking success!”

Black Friday & Cyber Monday Shopping & Shipping Trends

• Strong Consumer Demand: This November, consumers showed up in full force. Many consumers, who have been price-sensitive all year, reportedly wanted to take advantage of savings ahead of the holiday season. Categories that topped the charts include apparel, beauty & cosmetics, and home goods. However, there was also a surge in big ticket items that we hypothesize was in part driven by the anticipated Trump tariff increases early next year.
• Early Promotions Drove Early Performance: Deals launched earlier this year as brands tried to get ahead of the shorter-than-usual holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. On average, Flexport brands that launched early promotions saw a 12% lift in the days leading up to BFCM (November 24-27), and still delivered strong sales during Cyber 5.
• Combining Promotions with Logistics to Increase Sales: Flexport partnered with customers to forecast demand and promotions ahead of the BFCM holiday. We recommended that customers with large SKU counts, such as apparel and footwear brands, promote sitewide sales to prevent out-of-stocks on select SKUs. For brands with smaller SKU counts or holiday-centric SKUs, such as toys or electronics, we frontloaded inventory to get ahead of promotions and prevent out-of-stocks. To increase basket sizes and reduce shipping costs, we partnered with brands to promote bundles and distributed inventory across our network to prevent splitting shipments. Lastly, we negotiated competitive rates and provided easy return solutions so Flexport merchants could offer ‘Free Shipping’ and ‘Free Returns,’ which helps increase sales conversions.

Ecommerce Players Boast Record-Breaking Sales

• Amazon: Amazon reported that its ‘12 Days of Deals’ was its biggest Thanksgiving holiday shopping event ever. The deal event saw record sales and a record number of items sold.
• Shopify: Shopify’s President, Harley Finkelstein, shared that total sales by Shopify merchants globally reached $11.5 billion, up 24% from 2023, serving 76+ million consumers worldwide. As Shopify’s official logistics partner, Flexport is proud to help deliver on that success.
• TikTok Shop: TikTok Shop shared that Black Friday drove $100 million in U.S. sales, and users viewed more than 30,000 livestreams. While that’s only 1% of the total sales, it’s hard to downplay the growth of the social commerce platform. Over Cyber 5, Flexport customers doubled their TikTok Shop orders, versus the same period last year.
• SHEIN Marketplace: Shein has not publicly reported its results, but based on our merchant data, Shein Marketplace orders nearly tripled year-over-year. Shein Marketplace had steady promotions throughout the entire month, including 11-11 and BFCM.

For more Black Friday and Cyber Monday insights, join our webinar on Thursday, December 5. Register here.