By Carson Cobb, Fractional Head of Ecommerce. Data checked November 1, 2026.
Holiday shoppers are buying for someone else. They don’t know your product, they don’t know which size to pick, and they’re shopping on a deadline. The brands that win the season make that easy with three things: a gift collection, a gift card and bundles that work as gifts.
I checked 606 Shopify stores for all three on November 1, eight weeks before Christmas.
The short version
- 62% have a gift collection live with products in it. Supplements are the big exception at 29%.
- 54% sell a gift card. That leaves almost half of stores with nothing to sell after shipping cutoffs pass.
- 25% have neither. In supplements it’s 45%, in pet 39%.
- 81% have a bundle, kit, set or pack collection. Bundles are standard. Whether they are positioned as gifts is another question.
- Only 23% have a Black Friday collection live. More in the Black Friday report.
Readiness by category
| Category | Stores | Gift collection with products | Gift card | Neither | Bundle collection |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel | 95 | 91% | 69% | 3% | 79% |
| Beauty and skincare | 124 | 77% | 60% | 19% | 89% |
| Home | 77 | 71% | 57% | 10% | 87% |
| Food and beverage | 149 | 55% | 54% | 31% | 77% |
| Pet | 41 | 54% | 41% | 39% | 80% |
| Supplements | 120 | 29% | 39% | 45% | 75% |
Beauty, home and apparel treat the holidays as their season. Supplement brands mostly don’t, and that’s a missed opportunity. Wellness gifts, stocking stuffers and “new year, new routine” kits are some of the easiest things to gift, and nearly half of supplement stores have no gift path at all.
Gift collection size
The typical gift collection had 46 products overall, but the range is wide: 20 in supplements, 22 in food, 23 in pet, 41 in beauty, 69 in home and 168 in apparel.
Bigger isn’t better for gifting. A gift shopper with 168 options and no guidance leaves. A good gift collection is short, sorted by price, and makes the choice for them: one under $25, one under $50, one showpiece.
The gift card is the last week of the season
Once shipping cutoffs pass, a store without a gift card has far fewer ways to catch a last minute gift buyer. A digital gift card costs nothing to stock, ships instantly, and can bring in a new customer.
46% of stores don’t have one. In supplements and pet, about 60% don’t.
What to do this week
- Publish a gift collection and link it from your main menu and homepage by mid November. Keep it short and sorted by price.
- Add a digital gift card if you don’t have one. It takes an afternoon.
- Turn one bundle into a gift set. Same products, gift ready packaging or a gift note, and a name that says gift.
- Set shipping cutoff dates in your announcement bar and cart, then switch the message to the gift card when they pass.
- Check your best sellers are in stock. 24% of stores with a best sellers collection had at least one sold out on November 1. More in the catalog and stock report.
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).
- Gift collection: a published collection whose address or title contains gift, holiday, Christmas, Xmas or stocking, with at least one product in it. Gift card collections were excluded. A few gift with purchase or summer holiday collections also match, which moves the total by less than one point.
- Gift card: a product whose title, type or address contains gift card or e gift.
- Bundle collection: a published collection with products whose address contains, as a separate word, bundle, kit, set, gift set, pack, variety pack, sampler, stack or build your own.
- Data: each store’s public product and collection data, checked November 1, 2026.
No store is named in this report. Want a second pair of eyes on your holiday setup? Book a 20 minute intro call.