Even if it doesn’t feel like it — it’s barely October and was almost 80 degrees in New York on Monday — the holiday season is almost upon us. Adobe is forecasting consumers will likely spend over $250 billion shopping online this holiday season. That’s about 5% more than last year. 

It’s almost the most critical time of the year for retailers.

“The holiday season is very important to our business. It's usually about 40% of our revenue,” said Matthew Hassett, founder and CEO of Loftie, a wellness company that sells alarm clocks and other sleep-related products — many of which are made in China.

It’s been a rough year, Hassett said, because of all the uncertainty around tariffs.

“The hardest year for sure, way harder than COVID. We launched during COVID, and that was relatively smooth, comparatively. This has just been touch and go, day by day,” he said.

But Hassett said he’s feeling more solid lately, after spending much of the summer diversifying and expanding into markets in Europe.

“Things are going well so far. September was our strongest month of the year,” he said. And he’s optimistic about the holiday season. 

Katie Thomas, lead of the Kearney Consumer Institute, said she’s expecting a strong holiday shopping season this year, too, overall.

“Consumer sentiment numbers have not been great, there's been a lot of stress and concern around the economy, but the reality is is in large part, consumers have still been spending,” she said.

With inflation creeping up again and concerns about tariffs still looming, though, she said shoppers are likely to be looking for deals this year more than ever.

“So even though brands may want to not discount as heavily given tariff implications on their margins, but will likely be forced to because they're really competing for that consumer dollar,” Thomas said.

To be competitive it’s also critical that businesses figure out how to be visible everywhere, said Vivek Pandya, lead insights analyst at Adobe. That includes on social media platforms and in AI search results.

“Given everything the consumer is dealing with in the economy, what's really standing out to us is how they're leaning on generative AI platforms to get a sense of better deals, product recommendations, information,” he said.

This year, Pandya said, Adobe is expecting the traffic retailers get from AI platforms to grow by 520%.

Correction (Oct. 9, 2025): A previous version of this article misstated the the amount holiday shoppers are forecast to spend.