By Carson Cobb, Fractional Head of Ecommerce. Data checked November 1, 2026. I will check the same stores again during Black Friday week.
This is the before picture. On November 1, I checked 606 Shopify stores and 121,519 products to see how many brands are already showing sale prices, how deep those markdowns go, and who has a Black Friday page built. I’ll check the same stores again during Black Friday week and publish the change, so you can see what growing brands actually do, not what they say they’ll do.
The short version
- Most stores already show sale prices. 73% showed a crossed out price on at least one product. The typical store had 11% of its catalog marked down.
- The typical markdown is 20%. Among stores with markdowns, the typical store’s median markdown was 20%. 29% of those stores had a typical markdown of 30% or more.
- Only 23% have a Black Friday collection published. A collection with Black Friday, BFCM or Cyber in its name, and some of those are left over from earlier years. 55% have a general sale or clearance collection.
- Sales are quietly undercutting subscriptions. Of reorderable brands with both subscriptions and markdowns, 68% mark products down deeper than their subscribe and save discount.
Markdowns by category
| Category | Stores | Any product marked down | Share of catalog marked down (typical store with markdowns) | Typical markdown | Stores with typical markdown of 30% or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel | 95 | 84% | 30% | 32% | 58% |
| Home | 77 | 83% | 15% | 21% | 27% |
| Beauty and skincare | 124 | 78% | 20% | 20% | 20% |
| Supplements | 120 | 75% | 24% | 19% | 26% |
| Pet | 41 | 68% | 27% | 15% | 25% |
| Food and beverage | 149 | 56% | 11% | 18% | 18% |
Apparel behaves like apparel: deep, wide and constant markdowns. The more interesting pattern is in reorderable categories. Supplements and pet brands mark down a large share of their catalog, but not deeply. Food brands mostly don’t mark down at all.
Who is ready for Black Friday
| Category | Black Friday, BFCM or Cyber collection live | Sale, clearance or outlet collection live |
|---|---|---|
| Apparel | 41% | 88% |
| Beauty and skincare | 30% | 58% |
| Home | 29% | 78% |
| Supplements | 18% | 35% |
| Pet | 15% | 56% |
| Food and beverage | 11% | 37% |
A Black Friday collection that is published early is not a sign of discounting early. Many brands build the page, hide it from the menu, and switch it on the morning of the sale. That’s the right move. The page gets indexed, the links in your emails are tested, and the launch is one click instead of a scramble.
The subscription problem nobody talks about
Here’s the finding that matters most for brands that sell things people reorder.
Of the 233 reorderable brands that offer subscriptions and also have products marked down, 158 (68%) have a typical markdown deeper than their subscribe and save discount. The typical subscription discount in this group is 10% to 15%. The typical markdown is closer to 20%.
When a one time sale beats the subscription price, two things can happen:
- New customers choose the sale price and skip the subscription.
- Existing subscribers notice, cancel, and buy on sale.
Black Friday makes this worse, because markdowns get deeper and every subscriber sees the email. Before you send the first Black Friday email, decide what your subscribers get. A few options that hold up:
- Give subscribers the same or better price for the sale window, applied automatically.
- Make the sale a gift with purchase or a bundle instead of a straight percentage off, so the subscription price stays the best price on the core product.
- Exclude your subscription heroes from the sale and put the discount on add ons and gift sets.
What to do before Black Friday
- Build the Black Friday collection now and hide it. Test the link from your email platform and your ads before the day.
- Check your compare at prices. A crossed out price that never changes stops working. If 50% of your catalog has been “on sale” all year, the Black Friday price has to be dramatically lower to register.
- Protect your subscription price. See the section above.
- Set your free shipping line for the sale. Bigger carts during Black Friday mean you can raise it or use it as the offer. The free shipping calculator works it out from your own order value.
- Restock or hide sold out best sellers. 24% of stores with a best sellers collection had at least one product in it sold out on November 1.
How this was done
- Stores: 606 US Shopify stores priced in US dollars: supplements (120), beauty and skincare (124), food and beverage (149), pet (41), home (77) and apparel (95). Mostly small and mid size direct to consumer brands. Stores with fewer than 3 products were excluded.
- Data: each store’s public product data, up to 1,000 products per store, plus its published collections. Checked November 1, 2026. Gift cards were excluded.
- Marked down: a product counts as marked down when any variant shows a compare at price higher than its selling price. Discount is (compare at price minus price) divided by compare at price, using the deepest variant on each product. Some brands keep a permanent compare at price, so this measures what shoppers see, not a change from last month.
- Black Friday collection: a published collection whose address or title contains Black Friday, BFCM or Cyber. About one in seven of these carry an earlier year in the address, so this counts published pages, not pages built for 2026. Sale collection: an address with sale, clearance, outlet, deals or last chance as a separate word (so wholesale doesn’t count).
- Subscriptions versus markdowns: compares each store’s median markdown with its most common recurring subscription discount (checked on up to 20 products per store, best sellers first). Plans with no price change count as 0%. Leaving those out, the share is 63%.
No store is named in this report. Want to see how your store compares before the sale? Book a 20 minute intro call.