Friendship Gifting Led a Warm Week in Global Gifting

The busiest gift-givers this week weren't partners planning something romantic or parents marking a milestone. They were friends, sending birthday gifts a few days late, posting small things across time zones, and rallying around someone who had come through a rough patch.

Gifting between friends sat behind 24% of the week's gifts worldwide, second only to family. Birthdays did most of the asking, and being slightly late seemed to be part of the charm rather than a problem.

A quarter of this week's gifting happened between friends.

New babies got a proper welcome in the United States

The other story of the week belonged to people who are only days old. Aunts sent engraved keepsakes, friends congratulated new parents, and families sent tiny clothes to welcome a new arrival.

In the United States, 15% of gifting went to new babies, more than new arrivals claimed in any other big market. Birthday gifting still led there, as it did nearly everywhere, but the welcome gifts were impossible to miss.

It's a useful pattern for anyone selling anything soft, small or personalizable. New baby gifting rarely arrives alone. Shoppers often want one thing for the baby and one thing for the parents, in the same order.

Bookshops turned into gift counters

Books were one of the most gifted items of the week, making up 10% of everything that went out wrapped. They travelled with twine, a card and often a bouquet from somewhere else entirely, heading for birthdays and for no occasion at all.

They also travelled far. More than half of this week's gifting crossed a border, landing in Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Malta and beyond, with notes written in Spanish, Turkish, French, Arabic and Dutch.

Britain leaned hard into birthdays, with roughly two of every three gifts sent there marking one. Australia looked similar, while gifting in the United States spread wider across babies, thank-yous and everyday reasons.

What this means for merchants

A friendship-heavy week rewards stores that make gifting easy on ordinary products, not just on obvious presents. Friends buy small, they buy late, and they want a place to write something.

Two things matter most here. Give shoppers a gift message field so the words are theirs, and let them mark a single item as a gift when the rest of the order is for themselves. That covers both the belated birthday and the baby gift bought alongside the weekly shop.