Select discount indices from the third quarter of 2025. Six brands where the Random Walk Promotional Ensemble moved ahead of what management reported: three leaning harder on promotions, three pulling back.
Greg RobinNov 2025
Why discounts lead the print
The Random Walk Promotional Ensemble delivers the most quantitative and predictive tracking of implied discounts and promotional cadence available. When brands struggle to generate organic demand, they ramp up email volume to their leads and customers. We capture those potential inflections in near real time and alert our investor partners ahead of the Street.
Discount index: normalized to 100 for each brand. Above 100, discount campaigns are more intense and frequent than in the past; below 100, fewer and less intense. Heat tables show last week, quarter-to-date and year-to-date change vs the prior year, with data through Nov 23, 2025 (Sprouts through Nov 2).
"Abercrombie brands made sequential progress… and we are tightly managing inventory as we aim for fourth quarter brand net sales to be approximately flat to last year's record."
"…keeping inventory tight while continuing to flow in newness, allowing for AUR improvement on lower promotions."
"Increased promotional activity to clear inventory."
"…challenging start to holiday shopping beginning in Q3… highly competitive environment." "Our customers are waiting for deeper discounts before making purchases."
CAVA▲ Intensifying
Cava
Inflecting metric · Total promotional volume+225%Feb 2024 – Oct 2025
+11.9Mpeak 2-week avg YoY change in promotional emails
How we measured it
Total promotional email volume, 2-week moving average vs the prior year. Cava's promotional email turned sharply higher from mid-2024 and accelerated through 2025, peaking at about +11.9M emails a fortnight vs the prior year.
Same-store sales down 20% over three quarters
Restaurant-level margin down 100 bps
Management commentary · Nov 5, 2025
"Entering the fourth quarter, we're seeing further moderation."
"So we don't want to overstate the challenges of the consumer, but you can look at the data. They're clearly out there, whether it's student loan repayment, consumer sentiment, just the inflationary pressures all around them."
"Outperformance in the quarter came from standout performance at Gap… consumers responded to our product and storytelling, which enabled us to lower discounting."
Gross margin 46.1%, up 70 bps, on higher merchandise margins
Management commentary · Nov 19, 2025
"A major change that we have continued to make is to substantially reduce promotions at Pottery Barn."
"And as we go into the holiday season, we continue to have opportunity from a year-over-year perspective in pulling back on promotions."
Promotional data from the Random Walk Promotional Ensemble. Commentary and metrics from company earnings releases and calls on the dates shown. Not investment advice.
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