How the fastest-growing retail brands are winning in 2025

Retail is in an acceleration cycle, and most brands aren’t keeping up. Consumer behavior is changing faster than annual plans, category norms or outdated playbooks can handle. Yet a small group of growing retailer brands are adapting faster than the rest of the market.

What are they doing differently?

In this article, I’ll break down the strategies behind the fastest-growing retail brands and how other retailers can borrow from their playbooks.

Retail is moving faster than it has in a decade.

Deloitte’s Global Powers of Retailing and NRF’s Hot 25 Retailers both show the same pattern: the fastest-growing brands are those that tightly align with loyalty, experience, convenience and operational agility.

In 2025, the gap widened. The growth leaders aren’t just selling more; they’re scaling smarter. They’re using insight to stay ahead of demand and technology to meet consumer expectations. 

Let’s look at the retailers leading this acceleration.

Here are the brands accelerating the fastest heading into 2026, based on revenue growth, digital expansion and share-of-wallet gains (Sources: Business of Fashion, Deloitte, NRF, Statista, Forbes).

Each of these brands is winning for a different reason, but there are clear themes to unpack.

The fastest-growing retail brands share the same foundation: They build around the customer. They use consumer data to understand changing motivations, technology to remove friction and purpose to reinforce trust. Across categories, the same three patterns show up.

1. Customer-centric innovation

Growth brands obsess over understanding changing motivations and use technology to spot changes and stay in communication. 

They invest in:

Personalization engines

Sephora’s Beauty Insider program for instance uses customer profiles and purchase history to tailor recommendations. It now has 34 million members in North America, one of the strongest loyalty ecosystems in retail.

Loyalty ecosystems

Loyalty programs like Target’s Circle program has more than 100 million members, and the recent Circle relaunch doubled the number of personalized offers per shopper.

Community-building strategies

Lululemon’s grassroots events for example include community building strategies like run clubs, yoga sessions and ambassador-led classes, which serves as a retention engine. In 2024, the brand surpassed $10B in annual revenue and the brand community is a key driver of that growth.

Always-on insight loops

By testing ideas continuously, brands learn faster and scale winning concepts across markets. This practice turns consumer understanding into a daily habit rather than a quarterly checkpoint. This same discipline underpins Sephora’s loyalty program and the same rhythm Lululemon uses to scale its community globally.

When brands use consumer insight as a real-time operating system rather than a reporting function, loyalty deepens and lifetime value increases.

2. Technology and omnichannel investment

AI, data and friction-free shopping are now baseline expectations. The fastest-growing retailers fold technology into their operations. They use it to understand demand, personalize experiences, connect channels and remove friction. 

Four capabilities show up consistently in this area:

Predict demand

Walmart uses real-time machine learning models to forecast demand, optimize inventory and reduce out-of-stocks across thousands of stores. Their investments in data science contributed to 21% global eCommerce growth in Q1 FY25.

Personalize recommendations

Target Circle is one of the largest loyalty ecosystems in retail, with over 100M+ members across three tiers. It blends convenience, personalization and omnichannel access into a seamless shopping experience. 

Integrate store + digital journeys

Lululemon blends app usage, store events and product drops into a seamless omnichannel experience. In 2024, total revenue grew across every region, including 41% growth in China. 

Speed up fulfillment Target’s same-day services, including Drive Up, order pickup and Shipt, grew more than 10% year over year and continue to drive the retailer’s highest satisfaction scores. Drive Up alone has reshaped Target’s store network into micro-fulfillment hubs.

Rapid insights system 

Walmart uses real time data to test ideas and optimize retail media performance. 

This is what omnichannel looks like now: Connected, insight-driven and fast enough to keep up with consumer behavior.

Technology fuels speed. The brands pulling ahead pair digital investment with clear values that consumers can see. 

3. Sustainability and brand purpose

Nearly 96% of Gen Z shop by values. The fastest-growing retailers tie their brand purpose to visible actions that reduce waste, improve transparency and support communities. 

Brands are winning here by:

Reducing waste

Lululemon’s “Like New” resale initiative has kept 1.7 million products in use, extending their lifecycle and reducing apparel waste. The program expanded nationwide after strong pilot performance.

Using transparent supply chains

H&M publishes global supplier lists and traceability maps, which are key reasons it remains one of the most recognized purpose-led fashion retailers worldwide.

Backing social impact commitments

Target invests 5% of its profits back into communities. These programs include youth education, local partnerships and neighborhood revitalization.

Creating refillable, repairable or circular products

Sephora offers refillable products and invests in packaging partnerships that reduce single-use waste. 

The reality? Shoppers want proof they can see, rather than slogans.

Here’s how these strategies show up in practice. 

Lululemon: Global expansion + community strategy

Lululemon builds its business around people showing up and participating. Their run clubs, ambassador programs and local activations give people a reason to get and stay involved. That involvement is real participation, fostering a sense of belonging that drives international expansion and supports premium pricing.

Walmart Connect: Retail media momentum

Retail media is projected to hit $62B+ globally in 2025, and Walmart Connect is at the heart of it. 

It uses first-party purchase data at scale, making ad budgets more efficient and creating a high-margin revenue stream for Walmart.

Shein + Temu: Digital-first disruption

Shein and Temu are growing at a pace traditional retailers can’t match. Their advantage extends beyond digital fluency to include operational velocity. 

They use: 

Algorithmic forecasting

Shein analyzes search trends, social content and browsing patterns to spot micro-trends within days and launches up to 6,000 new products a day. 

Temu is part of PDD Holdings, a massive data ecosystem based in China. This company processes billions of data points daily to inform pricing and promotions. 

Rapid supply chain cycles

Shein works with small-batch suppliers and orders just 100-200 pieces at a time to see what hits. 

Temu removes distributors, wholesalers and retailers by using a “factor-to-consumer” model. Shipping takes longer, but costs are low. 

Micro-trend testing

Both brands use constant, granular tests to decide what to promote and what to cut. It’s retail as an always-on experiment. 

Ultra-low pricing Their models reduce risk and keep pricing low. This fuels global reach and rapid adoption. 

Temu’s parent company, PDD Holdings, reports 86% of YoY growth, and Shein’s estimated 2023 revenue hit $45 billion. 

The core of Shein and Temu’s disruption is simple: Rapid testing, fast feedback loops and decisions grounded in real consumer behavior. Zappi customers use the platform to do the same thing — for creative, product and concept decisions.

The brands scaling fastest aren’t winning by accident. They’re using repeatable systems that help them learn faster, personalize smarter and operate with agility. 

Here’s the growth playbook other retailers can use based on what we see this year: 

1. Build loyalty engines, not loyalty programs

Target Circle, Beauty Insider and Lululemon’s community model drive loyalty through relevance, personalization and belonging.

High-growth brands make loyalty feel effortless and relevant. 

Takeaway: Loyalty is a customer experience, not a set of points to collect. 

2. Use AI to simplify choices

Shein and Sephora show how fast testing loops reduce risk and make decisions more aligned with real consumer behavior.

Takeaway: Fast feedback loops reduce risk, strengthen creative and help teams move faster with consumer behavior. 

3. Treat stores as experience centers

Lululemon’s events and Target’s micro-fulfillment model illustrate how physical retail amplifies both discovery and convenience.

4. Calibrate price, promotion and content with real-time feedback 

Fast-growing retailers test creative across channels and refine offers based on real behavior instead of static calendars. 

Takeaway: Real-time signals strengthen margins and reduce wasted spend.

5. Choose one signature value

Purpose can be a growth lever when it’s backed by action. 

• Lululemon’s “Like New” program keeps 1.7M+ products in use.

• Sephora expands refillable formats.

• Walmart continues large-scale sustainability and community investments.

Takeaway: Values drive loyalty when customers can see them in the product and experience.

In short: Build a real-time insight loop, personalize more of the experience, use stores as hybrid hubs and make purpose visible across touchpoints. Test creative, offers and products before scaling and let the data guide what comes next. 

Finally, let’s take a look at some of the increasing trends we’re seeing in the retail space as we enter 2026. 

Five retail brand trends will shape acquisition, loyalty and competitive advantage in 2026:

1. AI-powered personalization goes mainstream Tailored offers, content and experiences become standard.

Why it matters: Personalization lifts conversion, repeat rate and lifetime value

2. Experiential retail expands Stores evolve into community and discovery hubs, lifting affinity and dwell time. Why it matters: Experience builds emotional equity and strengthens loyalty.

3. D2C acceleration Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands strengthen customer relationships, invest in first-party data and regain control over the supply chain.

Why it matters: Direct channels offer better data, stronger loyalty and higher profitability. 

4. Circular retail grows fast

Sustainability becomes a model. Trade-in, repair, refill and resale accelerate as consumers prioritize longevity and sustainability.

Why it matters: Such programs increase customer retention and unlock new revenue streams. 

5. Challenger brands rise quickly 

High-growth categories to watch: Beauty, athleisure, pet care, home organization, discount marketplaces and boutique wellness.

These players win by serving a sharply defined customer with differentiated value and community-first positioning.

Why it matters: Category fragmentation rewards clarity. Brands with a strong POV scale faster than generalists.

The retailers who win in 2026 won’t be the loudest — they’ll be the clearest. They’ll know their customers. They’ll know their edge. And they’ll act fast.