Back to all
In January, retailers usually brace for a mid-winter slump, as shoppers tighten their wallets after the holiday spending binge.
But Rithum’s January 2026 ecommerce data tells a different story: shoppers are hunting strategically instead of hibernating. They’re shopping with clear intent in an ecommerce landscape that’s fundamentally different than any we’ve seen before. And the channels and products they’re choosing reveal telling patterns about where ecommerce could be heading.*
January 2026 ecommerce overview: What the data reveals
Fashion doesn’t take a January break, but it does lean towards the more practical. Boots of some kind (winter, work, fashion, etc) represent 16% of all categorized purchases, while women’s tops and blouses captured another 3%. Combined, those two categories make up nearly one in five items sold in January.
This aligns with broader retail patterns: major retailers run sales with huge discounts throughout January, making it a strategic shopping month. January is when savvy shoppers stock up at discounts.
It’s also highlighting what we were tracking in 2025 as a fundamental shift in retail dynamics: consumers have learned to work the calendar, comparison shopping rather than impulse shopping or waiting for peak seasons and big tentpole events. This consumer awareness causes retailers to compete against each other with aggressive promotion instead of relying on traditional seasonal demand and consumer loyalty to drive sales. Peak seasons are spreading across the year, with the old playbook giving way to year-round promotional warfare.
Back to January trends: after boots and shirts, health and beauty led the way, with vitamins and minerals rounding out the top three categories. Though minute in size, vitamins made up a mighty 3% of ecommerce purchases in January. As shoppers update their wardrobe to look better on the outside, those vitamin purchase spikes likely reflect January health goals to feel better on the inside.
But just because consumers are looking chic and feeling good doesn’t mean they want to brave the cold. January sold 8% more books than June, possibly proving that beach read season loses to winter reading coziness.
Or maybe it’s that the January books are actually beach reads: luggage purchases doubled in January, compared to June. While summer is often considered travel season, January travelers are evidently updating gear for their winter escapes (and maybe packing a good read in that new luggage), or even preparing well in advance for that summer getaway.
The continued social commerce surge
As we saw with boots and blouses, fashion dominated January. And that dominance connects directly to where consumers are shopping. According to Rithum’s data, fashion performed 2.4X better on social commerce than traditional ecommerce last month, accounting for 30% of sales volume on TikTok Shop, compared to just 12% of volume on more traditional ecommerce marketplaces.
The difference isn’t only about the platform (although social selling is increasingly becoming it’s own marketplace). The broader truth is that regardless of where you’re selling, the principles that make social selling work—authentic storytelling and video-first product demonstrations, for example—are becoming table stakes. Embracing these approaches, whether on social platforms or your own site, is a great way to create trust with customers in an increasingly competitive market.
What January 2026 tells us about the year to come
Ecommerce has evolved beyond simple channel optimization. It requires reading between the data points for details that don’t reveal themselves in raw numbers alone.
At Rithum, we work to spot signals before they become obvious, connect disparate patterns into actionable strategies, and help you pivot as consumer behavior shifts. These are just some of the trends our data can pull—when we dig into the pipes behind your commerce engine, we can get granular and dive deeper into where strategies can improve.
The complexity of modern ecommerce isn’t something you need to navigate alone—it’s why we’re here as a dedicated guide who understands both consumer data, evolving channels, and how the underlying stories can be your most valuable competitive advantage.
Talk to our team*Methodology Note: This analysis is based on data sourced from the Rithum commerce platform, representing 8.2M unique products and 20K+ suppliers generating billions in global sales across ecommerce channels. As is the case with all data of this kind from any commerce platform, results reflect the composition of brands and retailers using the Rithum solution and may not represent all ecommerce activity.
