Holidays & Seasonal: pricing & assortment benchmark, 2020–2026
Based on 610 Holidays & Seasonal storefronts tracked from June 2020, of which 117 were still trading in July 2026.
What a typical holidays & seasonal merchant looks like
| June 2020 | July 2026 | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median product price | $35.94 | $47.99 | +33.5% |
| Median catalogue size | 83 SKUs | 125 SKUs | +50.6% |
| Still trading | — | 19.2% of the 2020 cohort | 80.8% attrition |
All figures are measured on the same 117 stores in both periods, so none of the movement is caused by merchants entering or leaving the market.
Where Holidays & Seasonal sits against the wider market
| Holidays & Seasonal | All DTC | |
|---|---|---|
| Price change | +33.5% | +20.1% |
| Assortment change | +50.6% | +34.7% |
| Survival rate | 19.2% | 25.7% |
Prices rose faster than the market, and survival ran below it — Holidays & Seasonal ranks 28th of 31 for survival among categories with a defensible sample.
US CPI-U rose 29.5% over the same span, so a +33.5% move is a real-terms rise of roughly 3%.
Price positioning
Holidays & Seasonal is 22nd of 31 by median product price.
| Band | Example categories | Median price 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Premium | Autos & Vehicles, Internet, Antiques & Collectibles… | $110.00 – $185.10 |
| Upper-mid | Safety & Survival, Science, Home & Garden… | $73.85 – $100.21 |
| Mid | Arts & Entertainment, Libraries & Museums, Finance… | $48.19 – $70.23 |
| Value | Holidays & Seasonal, Gifts & Special Events, Beauty & Fitness… | $33.06 – $47.99 |
| Entry | Toys & Hobbies, Smoking & Vaping, Books & Literature | $25.92 – $32.40 |
A merchant pricing above $47.99 is above this category's median; the assortment benchmark is 125 products.
Using these benchmarks
- Pricing. $47.99 is the mid-2026 category median. Position deliberately relative to it rather than by accident.
- Assortment. 125 products is typical. Well under that is narrow for the category; well over is broad. Neither is wrong — but it should be a decision.
- Planning. +33.5% over six years is the survivors' experience, not a forecast. Budget on it rather than assuming pricing power.
Want this for your own store?
The Pre-Holiday Benchmark Audit measures your storefront against these numbers — where your prices sit, whether your range is normal for Holidays & Seasonal, and what is dead weight in your catalogue. $149, delivered in 48 hours.
Method & limitations
Matched cohort of Holidays & Seasonal storefronts (Active, ≥10 products, known price and category) present in both June 2020 and July 2026. Medians throughout — price and catalogue distributions are heavily right-skewed and a mean describes no real store.
- Prices are modelled from storefront data, not observed transactions. Read them as relative movement, not absolute levels.
- Survivor-only. This answers what surviving holidays & seasonal merchants did, not what happened to everyone. Stores that failed appear in the survival rate and nowhere else.
- Unweighted — a $50M brand counts the same as a $50k one.
- Category is the merchant's primary classification; multi-category stores are counted once, and merchants who changed category over the period are excluded from these figures.
- Assortment counts listed products, not depth — a 500-SKU store may be one product in 500 variants.
Full methodology, including the composition-bias correction these figures depend on, is in the report's method section.