What to Expect: Consumer Spending Priorities & Holiday Outlook

We surveyed low- and middle-income consumers to find where they're feeling the financial pressure and their holiday spending plans.

Welcome to Inside The Collective, a newsletter that invites you into the brains, conversations and ideas of Allison Collins and jessica ramírez, friends and cofounders of The Consumer Collective. Here, we share weekly thoughts on consumer sentiment, news, retail, fashion, beauty, business, things we like, things we don’t — and why. We hope it helps you connect the dots across the consumer world.

First thing’s first: an announcement! We have launched a new consumer insights report: Consumer Spending Priorities and Holiday Outlook. It is downloadable here, and paid subscribers get a preview, below.

What we’re watching:

• People’s fascination with The Louvre robbery, which feels quaint in the context of the recent news cycles.

• The government shutdown means official retail sales numbers are not out, but alternate sources suggest sales rose, due in part to higher prices.

• This Kering-L’Oréal deal is major, with 50-year licenses for Creed, Bottega Veneta, Balenciaga and potentially Gucci post Coty. The thing actually catching my eye is the intention to explore luxury wellness and longevity via experiences.

• Last week Jess attended a Korean beauty and culture event (KOOM 2025: The Next Wave of K-Beauty Lands in Brooklyn), and explored both already-established and up-and-coming brands. Attendees included Anua, Sungboon Editor, MED:ALL, BANO Cosmetics, neaf neaf, Kaja and others. The event underscores the focus on the U.S. market for a lot of these brands, as well as a reminder of Korean culture’s strong influence. Just this week, KPop Demon Hunters became the most-watched film in Netflix history, with 325 million views. It’s the second we’ve been to in recent months (the other was Nurilounge K-Beauty Boost, held in August.)

• Dick’s Sporting Goods continues to land cult brands; the latest is Gymshark.

• We are hearing (a lot) from members of our extremely qualified, educated and experienced peer group (across sectors) that it is nearly impossible to find new jobs right now. Is it a Millennial problem, or an economic one? (We think it’s more likely option B, given that Gen Z, who cost less to employ, is out there looking without success, too.) The Nvidia CEO suggested people pivot to become plumbers and electricians to help build data centers. (Helpful!)

• Wikipedia page views are down, which it attributes to generative AI.

• The iPhone 17 is selling well in China. So are Hermès handbags. (Allison Collins)

What we like: Art of Play

This Brooklyn shop caters to offline fun with unbelievably chic puzzles, games, toys and books. Ben, Ruby and I stopped in over the weekend during our daily family walk and we were in there at least 20 minutes. Most of the solidly-Millennial crowd was in there even longer as they solved various puzzles and spun sculptural tops. I left with this puzzle, which now lives on my desk so I can fidget with it during meetings. (Allison Collins)

artofplay

A post shared by @artofplay

What we’re reading:

Why are young people getting married again? (Dazed)

This article about women taking high levels of testosterone (NYTimes)

In China, global companies struggle as home-grown brands steal thunder (Fashion Network)

The Analysis: Consumer Spending Priorities and Holiday 2025 Outlook

The Analysis is available for paid subscribers only. This week, we’re diving into our latest consumer insights report, which focuses on lower- and middle-income U.S. consumers: their financial priorities, their holiday shopping plans, their preferred retailers and more. For more insights, send us a note at info@theconsumercollective.co. You can download the full report here.

A few months ago, Jess and I started noticing that a lot of the reporting around consumer spending centered on the top 10 percent of consumers. It makes sense that many consumer companies focus on that group, which is stable and the least impacted by world tumult. But it left us wondering … what’s going on with everybody else?

We had a sneaky feeling that lower- and middle-income consumers were feeling the strain based on news (such as this story on people financing their groceries), jobs reports and financial indicators. But to find out for sure, we decided to ask.

We surveyed 1,000 individuals in households making $75,000 or less (about 45 percent of U.S. households fall into that bracket) to find out their financial priorities, holiday spending plans and identify opportunities to connect with this large and important consumer group.

Here’s what we found.