Deloitte’s latest holiday retail report found Australian consumers expect to spend nearly 14% more this holiday season, averaging $1,140 per person. Thirty-three percent of shoppers plan to increase spending compared to last year, up from just 24% the year before, while 84% of retailers anticipate stronger sales than 2024, more than double the 51% who expected growth back then.

Retailers are projecting roughly half of their holiday revenue will land during Click Frenzy, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, compressing a season’s worth of demand into a handful of high-intensity weeks each year.

What a compressed sales window does to packaging supply chains

When half a retailer’s holiday revenue arrives in a few concentrated sales events rather than spread across weeks, packaging suppliers face a similar spike in demand within a similarly narrow window. Retailers ordering stock in the lead-up need packaging suppliers who can turn around volume fast, not just produce it eventually once things settle down. Businesses relying on Star Stuff Group product packaging for their holiday stock are better positioned when orders go in ahead of the Black Friday to Boxing Day window Deloitte’s data points to, rather than scrambling during it.

Businesses that leave packaging orders until closer to Black Friday are competing with every other retailer doing the same thing at the same moment, which is exactly the scenario that catches under-prepared brands out at the worst possible time.

Spending growth isn’t evenly distributed across categories

Deloitte’s report notes gift spending is set to rise a modest 4.2%, while spending on experiences is forecast to leap almost 30%. That gap matters for retailers selling physical goods, because it suggests gift-category growth, while real, is more modest than the headline 14% figure implies at first glance.

Retailers competing for a smaller slice of gift-spending growth have more reason to lean on packaging as a differentiator, since the product category itself isn’t seeing the runaway growth experiences currently are.

Preparing stock before the compressed window opens

With 84% of retailers expecting stronger sales this year, packaging orders placed early avoid the scramble that comes when demand spikes align across the entire retail sector at once.

The forecast makes clear that the retailers best placed to capture this season’s spending growth are the ones treating packaging lead times as part of holiday planning, not an afterthought once stock has already arrived on the dock.

Deloitte’s report also flags that retailer optimism has more than doubled since 2024, which suggests order volumes across the board, not just at a handful of major chains, will be higher than what suppliers handled last holiday season.

Suppliers who scaled capacity to last year’s demand risk being caught short this time, and the businesses ordering from them should factor that into how early they lock in their own holiday packaging runs.

Retailers who ran lean on packaging stock during a quieter 2024 season and got away with it should treat that as the exception rather than the pattern to expect again, given how firmly this year’s forecast points the other way.

A retailer that locks in packaging volumes based on last year’s cautious ordering, rather than this year’s more confident forecast, is the one most likely to be caught short exactly when demand peaks hardest.

The gap between last year’s caution and this year’s confidence is exactly the kind of shift that catches supply chains flat-footed, since ordering habits tend to lag sentiment by a full season rather than adjusting to it in real time.

Retailers who spoke to Deloitte about their own planning said inventory decisions for the November period were already being finalised months in advance, which leaves little room for a late change of heart once packaging orders are actually placed with a supplier.