Deloitte released its annual holiday retail forecast this morning. The headline number is $1.70 trillion to $1.71 trillion in total US holiday sales for November 2026 through January 2027, up 4.0% to 4.8% over last season. (Deloitte, September 10)
Skip the headline. The number that matters to a warehouse is the ecommerce line: $316.1 billion to $318.9 billion, growing 7.5% to 8.4%.
Total retail grows around 4%. Online grows around 8%. Online is growing at roughly double the rate of the market it sits inside, for the fourth consecutive holiday season. That gap is not a consumer story. It is a capacity story, and it lands on whoever picks and packs your boxes.
What the forecast actually assumes
Deloitte is not calling for a boom. Last season grew 4.1%, so the midpoint of this forecast is a normal year with a slightly better income backdrop. The firm projects disposable personal income up 4.5% to 5.2% across the season.
Vice chair Natalie Martini framed the season around deliberate consumers leaning on promotions to manage spending. Read that carefully. Promotion-driven demand is spikier than steady demand. Shoppers waiting for a discount do not buy in a smooth curve across November. They buy in bursts when the discount appears.
Do the math on your own volume
Here is the arithmetic that matters for a brand shipping 1,000 to 25,000 orders a month.
Take your actual November and December order counts from last year. Multiply by 1.08. That is your baseline if you simply grow with the category and do nothing else. Now find your single busiest day last season and multiply that by 1.08 too.
The second number is the one that breaks warehouses. Average volume up 8% is easy. Peak day up 8% on top of a peak that was already four or five times your normal day is a staffing question first, and then a question about whether your carrier pickup window can absorb the pallets it produces.
Two more inputs change the answer. If you are running a heavier promotional calendar than last year, your curve gets sharper, not just taller. If you added SKUs, your pick paths got longer and your units per hour went down even before volume moved.
What this means for your brand
The forecast is a planning input, not a prediction about your brand. Use it four ways.
Set the staffing conversation now, not in November. Warehouse labor gets tight in October, and warehouse employment fell in August heading into this season. Anyone hiring temporary pickers in the second week of November is bidding against every retailer in their metro.
Get inventory in before the receiving queue backs up. Every 3PL has a receiving bottleneck in October. If your Q4 goods are still on the water, that constraint is already partly out of your hands.
Price your shipping against peak surcharges, not base rates. Carrier peak fees are live from late October through mid January. An 8% volume increase at peak-season rates is not an 8% cost increase.
Plan January returns while you plan December outbound. A bigger ecommerce season produces a bigger returns wave 30 days later. Returns processing capacity is easier to reserve in September than in the first week of January.
At Moby Dick, spike handling is the part of this we get asked about most. Orders are processed within 24 hours, and our Canal Winchester location reaches 90% of US customers in two days by ground. Neither holds if inventory shows up late or the forecast we were given is a third of the real number. Tell your 3PL what is coming before it comes.
The opinion part
An 8% ecommerce season is not a reason to celebrate or panic. It is a reason to stop treating peak as a surprise.
Most brands in the 1,000 to 25,000 order range plan Q4 demand and skip Q4 operations. They forecast revenue, buy inventory, book ads, then discover in week two of December that their pick rate has not moved since October while volume tripled. The forecast was fine. The capacity plan never existed. Deloitte just gave you a defensible number to build one against.
FAQ
Is 8% growth enough to change my fulfillment setup?
Probably not by itself. What changes the setup is the shape of the season, not the size. If your promotional calendar concentrates demand into a handful of days, the constraint is peak-day throughput, and that is worth solving whether the season grows 3% or 10%. Start with your busiest single day last year and work backwards.
When is it too late to switch 3PLs before peak?
Mid-September is the honest edge for a clean transition into this season. A migration needs an inventory transfer, integration testing, a test order cycle, and a stable period before volume arrives. Past early October you are usually better off riding out the season and moving in January. Our guide to choosing a 3PL walks through what to ask before you commit either way.
Does the total retail number matter at all if I only sell online?
It sets the promotional weather. When total retail grows 4% and online grows 8%, brick-and-mortar retailers discount harder to defend their share, and that pressure reaches your category page. Plan for a promotional season rather than a full-price one, and make sure your pick and pack setup can absorb the order spikes that discounts produce.
How much inventory buffer should I hold for an 8% season?
There is no universal number, and anyone quoting one is guessing at your sell-through. What is defensible is holding buffer on your top SKUs by unit velocity rather than spreading it evenly. A stockout on a bestseller during a promotion costs more than carrying cost on the same units. If you want a second read on your Q4 plan, send us your order history.