See what your category did, and what to do next.

You've seen what 24 casual footwear brands did last Black Friday. This is what you do with it.

The shorter companion to the Casual Footwear Black Friday Benchmark: the seven decisions that mattered most in Holiday 2025, what's already changing in 2026, and the move to make on each one. Every play pairs last year's benchmark data with live signals from ShopVision tracking this year, so you're planning against the market as it is now, not as it was.

The seven plays.

01: Set your launch date against a November 15 median. 22 of 24 brands were discounting before Black Friday last year, and two thirds launched cold with no tease at all.

02: Treat 30% as the reference point, then decide whether to meet it. 30% was the most common flat rate and the ceiling almost nobody crossed. This year's off-season events are already running a step deeper.

03: Plan around boots, then pick your exception. Boots carried the category calendar in 2025, and the brands that stood out spotlighted something else.

04: Use membership to control timing, and grow the list in October. 7 of 24 brands gated early access or a stacked extra, never the core discount, and one of last year's holdouts just launched a points program.

05: Plan December as a continuation, not a restart. 23 of 24 brands kept discounting after Cyber Monday, and three never left a gap in their calendars.

06: Plan your inbox mix before you plan your volume. 439 emails in two weeks, with re-send rates that swung from almost zero to nearly 60% by brand.

07: Decide your year-end move, and your first week of January. The field split five ways after Christmas, and the brands that went quiet were back by January 2.