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ShipBob’s BFCM 2024: The Highlights
Every year seems to be fraught with uncertainty, but 2024 takes the cake over the last few years, yet in true entrepreneurial fashion, our customers prevailed this Black Friday Cyber Monday and managed to go bigger than ever!
While many were concerned that rising inflation and competitive pressures across Meta, TikTok, and Google mixed with election season and the shortest holiday window due to Thanksgiving falling on the 28th might deter consumer demand, but Black Friday Cyber Monday 2024 ended up being a record-breaking success. Online shoppers turned out in droves to ring in the holiday season, while millions of ecommerce brands kicked into high gear to meet demand.
As a leading global supply chain and fulfillment technology platform designed for SMB and Mid-Market ecommerce merchants, ShipBob has a front-row seat to the magic of BFCM – and all the logistics that power it. Below, we share some of the top insights we saw throughout peak season 2024 – from our thousands of customers fulfilling orders across the globe.
Note: This data is across thousands of ecommerce merchants, tens of thousands of unique products sold, millions of shipments, and billions in revenue.
ShipBob’s BFCM 2024: The Highlights
Even though peak season is still going strong, it’s helpful to zoom out and look at the big picture of our customers’ success. Here are some of the highlights of ShipBob’s BFCM 2024 and the “Turkey 5” (Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, the following Saturday and Sunday, and Cyber Monday) so far:
Merchants can’t afford to buckle under peak pressures – and neither can their partners. That’s why ShipBob invests so heavily in building unmatched technology, best-in-class processes, and a global network; so that we can show up for brands to deliver unbreakably reliable, top-quality service during the busiest season.
This BFCM, ShipBob’s platform achieved:
- 100% platform uptime
- 43.3M successful calls to our Developer APIs
- A .231 millisecond response time
- 20.39M calls to our internal WMS APIs
November 2024 BFCM growth vs. October 2024
Black Friday Cyber Monday is always a crazy day for sales – but just how much crazier is it than a normal day?
ShipBob’s customer base of ecommerce brands experienced huge increases across the entirety of BFCM 2024. Here’s a breakdown of how each day’s sales compared to the average on the same days in October of this year (just the month before):
- Black Friday: +145% compared to the average Friday in October
- Sales for the Saturday after Black Friday: +234% compared to the average Saturday in October
- Total weekend sales: +290% compared to the average weekend in October
- Cyber Monday sales: +78% compared to the average Monday in October
Notable Brands
BFCM is a fantastic revenue driver for most brands, but certain product categories soared this year. Some of the most successful ecommerce brands included:
- Our Place, the viral cookware and kitchenware brand, discounted dozens of their most popular products and delivered cost-savings in the hundreds of dollars.
- Beachwaver, beauty brand and creators of the rotating curling iron, which ran a blockbusting 70% off sale site-wide.
- Pit Viper, a sunglasses brand that ran a 50% sale for a single minute on Cyber Monday, with discounts later in the week as well.
- Touchland, a hand sanitizer and beauty brand, ran a 20% sitewide sale and offered even steeper discounts for product bundles
- PetLab, a pet wellness brand that offered up to 55% off a new subscriber’s first month.
- Dossier, the luxurious yet affordable perfume brand, which offered up to 50% off select products (with discounts increasing as more items were added to the cart) and unlocked free shipping with the purchase of 4 items or more.
State by State
Compared to October 2024, some states in the US saw enormous increases in overall order volume and AOV.
In the US, the states with the highest increases in order volume during BFCM 2024 were:
- 1. Kentucky (+202%)
- 2. Mississippi (+197%)
- 3. West Virginia (+192%)
- 4. Alabama (+183%)
- 5. Nebraska (+177%)
The states with the smallest increases in order volume during BFCM 2024 were:
- Alaska (+97%)
- Hawaii (+99%)
- Nevada (+109%)
- California (+110%)
- Washington (+113%)
In the US, the states with the most sales during BFCM 2024 were:
- 1. California
- 2. Texas
- 3. Florida
- 4. New York
- 5. Illinois
Going the Distance
Ecommerce brands went to great lengths to deliver BFCM orders this year – literally. While the shortest distance an order traveled across ShipBob’s network was just 1.4 miles within the city of Moreno Valley, CA, USA, some orders traveled up to 11,844 miles from ShipBob’s Birmingham, UK fulfillment center all the way to Invercargill, NZ.
Power through the rest of peak with ShipBob
BFCM is just the beginning of ecommerce peak season – and if these insights are anything to go by, the remaining holiday season will be a big one.
Even though BFCM is over, it’s never too late to partner with an expert supply chain and fulfillment partner like ShipBob to help you manage logistics during the busiest seasons of the year and beyond. ShipBob never stops receiving inventory (and didn’t extend our inbound receiving SLA), so you can ramp up quickly and set your brand up for a blockbuster 2025.
ShipBob’s technology, geographic footprint, forecasting data and analytics, fulfillment services, and customer support can help your brand fulfill thousands of orders accurately and efficiently, even allowing you to scale across and grow into more of our fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Australia, further reducing shipping costs and minimizing lead times.
If you’re interested in partnering with ShipBob, click below to request a quote.
