Despite the economic uncertainty that rocked much of 2025, initial Black Friday and Cyber Monday data showed consumers are not afraid to spend. American consumers spent $11.8 billion online on Black Friday, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
But when it comes to holiday beauty shopping, early data shows consumers are looking to strike a balance between value and indulgence. And whether shopping online or IRL, trusted recommendations — human or AI — are key to driving a sale.
TikTok Shop reported $500 million in sales over the four-day Black Friday to Cyber Monday period. According to NielsenIQ, TikTok Shop beauty sales, specifically, were up 73.3% over the last 52 weeks to $2.3 billion. Brands that used livestreaming saw an 84% boost in sales during the BFCM weekend, according to TikTok Shop. Jacqueline Flam, managing director of beauty and health at NielsenIQ, expects influence to continue into 2026.
“There is credibility that’s given to individual influencers on TikTok Shop,” said Flam. “Live shopping and this creator-led content on TikTok are really changing how people are discovering and buying beauty overall. The engagement and conversion are at all-time highs.”
Even while online sales remain a major sales driver, IRL experiences can be equally influential. According to NIQ holiday shopping data, brand experience was the top-reported purchasing driver, with 62% of respondents citing it as a sales driver.
“It’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Jessie Willner, co-founder of London-based fragrance brand Discothèque, said regarding driving holiday sales. The fragrance brand is planning a five-day pop-up in London’s Soho neighborhood ahead of the holidays, in addition to an exclusive scent for the U.K. department store Selfridges, launched ahead of Black Friday, and a global launch debuting December 10.
As the brand does not discount, those offerings are crucial to connecting with consumers in the peak shopping season.
“We’re giving our customers an opportunity to come experience the brand — not just in an online format, and without the retailer in between, so that we can make it exactly the way that Discothèque would be,” said co-founder Hanover Booth. “To avoid that lull after Black Friday, all of our releases have been in Q4; we’ve just given a lot of newness to our customers this season.”
The holiday season is also an opportunity to gain endorsements from key voices. In 2024, the brand’s Hacienda candle landed in The Guardian beauty columnist Sali Hughes’s holiday gift guide. Booth and Willner said they couldn’t keep the candle in stock following the inclusion.
This year, the brand’s products appear in Advent calendars by Sephora U.K. and British Vogue, with the Sephora Advent calendar already selling out of all 24,000 units leading up to Black Friday. Even if those calendars don’t lead to direct sales for Discothèque, they offer building blocks for brand visibility in the year to come.
“With the retailer, specifically, [the Advent calendar] helps with the longevity of the partnership, because it really solidifies you as a partner,” said Booth. “And then British Vogue has a lot of clout, and you’re surrounded by the most esteemed brands.”
And opportunities to get into those coveted placements may be rarer this year: According to NIQ’s Flam, U.S. tariffs have made sourcing the packaging necessary for holiday packages like Advent calendars or gift sets more challenging in 2025.
“We’ve had a lot of clients that have struggled with getting gift sets to shelf because of the tariff concerns earlier in the year — typically, those are ordered much earlier in the year,” said Flam.
Consumers are increasingly looking not just to verified names like Sali Hughes or Sephora, but also to AI to help them shop. According to Adobe Analytics, AI-driven retail traffic rose 805% during Black Friday. AI-assisted shopping guides may be especially attractive to households looking to shop for the pickiest of demographics: teens. According to NIQ’s holiday survey, households with teens and tweens were most likely to be using platforms like ChatGPT to drive gifting recommendations.
As far as what beauty products shoppers are buying, Q4 and the holidays have typically been a major sales driver for the fragrance category, and that looks to hold true for 2025, as well. NIQ data found fragrance to be the top beauty category for holiday shoppers, with 71% of consumers shopping beauty for the 2025 season intending to purchase fragrance.
Bath & Body Works was the top-cited fragrance brand among NIQ respondents. But shoppers are looking for luxury scents, as well. According to buy-now, pay-later platform Klarna, Maison Francis Kurkdjian’s Baccarat Rouge 540 fragrance — a 70-milliliter bottle of which retails for $355 — was the top-searched for beauty product on Black Friday.
And who are consumers shopping for this season? Themselves. According to NielsenIQ’s holiday shopping survey, 54% of consumers plan to treat themselves this holiday season.
“When we asked consumers what and whom they were looking to purchase for this holiday season, they themselves arose as a really big and growing subset, especially among millennials and Gen Z,” said Flam. “How we are seeing that through the lens of retailers and brands that have their own DTC is that they’re ensuring this self-giving attitude is focused on when we’re talking about communications, marketing and promotional design.”
But price and value still remain crucial decision factors during the holiday season. According to NIQ’s report, quality and price competitiveness were the No. 2 and No. 3 cited purchase drivers for beauty consumers. On the makeup side, as in fragrance, affordable brands won out, with E.l.f. Cosmetics, Maybelline and L’Oréal being the top brands among shoppers purchasing makeup for the holidays.
“Certainly beauty continues to be very resilient, but we’re seeing consumers take a more conscious attitude toward what they’ll be purchasing this holiday season,” said Flam.
