Your Q1 '25 eCom Calendar

Hey there 👋

Aside from everything controversial, like TikTok staying & Trump, we merchants have a lot to look forward to this quarter.

There are still about a dozen eCom events in just 3 months, where you can pick the brains of other successful merchants and share your own knowledge.

And there are also just as many holidays to prep your store & marketing for, and we’ll share tips for those too.

In today’s post, we’ll cover all of Q1 2025 so you won’t miss a date 👀

Let’s get into it 🔥

Psst… You ever just find a Shopify store and it just looks so good you want to copy it, but you can’t find the theme? We’ve got you covered with our Shopify Theme Detector, completely free to use.

1. Retail Events & Another New Years? 🎇 

If you’ve been able to go to NRF 2025: Retail’s Big Show in NY last week, I’m very jealous of you. But, lucky for us, there is a similar event popping up in just 3 days..

1️⃣ The Retail Summit, located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

This time around, many more known faces will be speaking — including Dan Finley (CEO of boohoo), Daniel Grieder (Hugo Boss founder).

If you’re in the UAE or planning to go within the next 3 days, definitely come by to learn from people with decades of experience.

While the hype & festive spirit around New Years has died down by now, there is another one.

2️⃣ Chinese New Year, starting Jan 29th

A 15-day long holiday celebrated by China, Taiwan, Singapore and other countries. This is our first holiday to come, and you best prepare your store for it like this:

🔴 Talk to Your Suppliers — if you do work with Chinese manufacturers, ask them about closure dates, lead times, and how available they’ll be in the holiday period.

🔴 Stock Up in Advance — the Lunar New Year is literally identical to how much of a rush New Years was, so treat it the same and have a lot of stock on hand.

🔴 Plan Your Marketing Now — if you haven’t done so already. Chinese New Year is completely themed, meaning you can create bundles, gifts, offers and discounts for customers without having to come up with anything too strictly original.

The Chinese New Years starts in January and ends with the Lantern Festival on Feb 12 — that’s a VERY long holiday, and you’d be making a mistake if you aren’t prepping your store.

Also, while it’s still January, CPMs are still low because the big brands blew their budget on New Years 😂 

Check out our post on How To Leverage Jan’s Low CPMs for cheaper ads 👀

2. Love is in The Air 💌 

We’ve come to February, and while there are only 3 upcoming events — they are all very important. Let’s start off with the biggest:

1️⃣ Valentine’s Day — the most romantic day of the year. Every eCom brand I see runs a campaign for couples, here’s a great example from Oura:

To make the most out of Valentine’s Day for your brand, you should:

🔴 Cater To Couples — this is the one day it’s ok to bundle things in couples, have couple-only items and gifts for the other half. Give discounts to everyone though!

🔴 Pink & Red Everywhere — be sure to set the mood by changing your website to have a lot more pink & red, as well as in your social media posts, and emails. Having a few hearts here and there also gets the job done!

🔴 Wrap Your Gifts — if your supply chain allows for it, make it so that if a customer buys something for over, let’s say, $100, their gift comes wrapped. This is a small, but very cool thing to do for a brand.

2️⃣ Ecommerce Berlin Expo, 19-20th Feb

This is Germany’s biggest eCom event (over 11K attendees confirmed) and has an extensive conference program with over 70 industry experts hosting masterclasses and sharing their knowledge.

It’s the whole expo shebang — very worth attending out if you’re in Berlin around this time!

3️⃣ eTail Australia, 25-26th Feb

Attendees can learn from & network with founders, CEOs, CMOs, as well as some leading economists of Australia, that’s about it. Unless you’re already making plans to visit Australia next month, I wouldn’t go out of my way to visit this expo.

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3. March is Too Much 🤯 

March has always been packed with events, and this year is no different. This’ll be a long list. Remember, you don’t need to attend any of these — only if you’re in the area and it’s convenient!

1️⃣ London eCommerce Summit, 3-4th March

A boutique-style event that will last two days, featuring the topics of strategy, marketing, customer experience and others.

2️⃣ DELIVER Asia, 5-6th Mach

Over 300 attendees, 200+ retail giants, 25+ supply chain partners, 35 speakers and 1000 1-to-1 meetings, this event stands out among the rest.

DELIVER even has a cool matchmaking system, what they call their 1-2-1, which will help you connect with supply chain leaders. Definitely try attend if you can!

3️⃣ St. Patrick’s Day, March 17th

Green and gold everywhere, pots of gold and rainbows! For us merchants it means we have more optimizing to do. Here’s what you can do for St. Patrick’s Day to increase CR%.

🔴 Offer “Lucky” Discounts — either through a pop-up or spinwheel like this:

🔴 Spice Your Site Up — of course, add gold and green everywhere, a few lucky clovers here and there and maybe a leprechaun in a thank-you post-purchase email. All of those things will go a long way!

🔴 Run a Social Media Contest — whoever dresses up as a leprechaun/pot of gold best gets a month supply of your products, or gets a repost. Anything to promote UGC!

4️⃣ eTail Berlin, 18-19th March

This one’s exciting, because speakers from big brands like HP, Guess, Leder & Schuh, POC Sports will talk about social commerce, AI, eCom, and omnichannel retail. Don’t be worried that it’s in Germany, there’ll be English speakers, as well!

5️⃣ Adobe Summit Las Vegas, 17-20th March

Another huge expo, with online and in-person options of attending, with speakers from multi-national brands like Nike & Walmart will discuss the latest trends and solutions.

6️⃣ Eid al-Fitr, 30th March

Our final event of Q1 2025 is Eid al-Fitr, the end of the fasting period of Ramadan. Muslim families usually exchange gifts and spend more during this time, and demand for gifts specifically will be higher during this time.

And that’s that for every event/holiday during Q1! Hope you enjoyed the read 🤗 

P.S. — Want to use Reddit to grow your brand? Check out our post Merchant’s Guide to Reddit in case you missed it 👀

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Thanks for reading and supporting E&U (Ecommerce & Unicorns)

Daniil from ECORN