76 One of the things I love most about working with independent retailers is their resilience and adaptability. They’ve weathered everything the world has thrown at them over the past few years, including shifting consumer behaviours, economic pressures, rising costs, and the arrival of new technologies. Yet they’ve kept innovating, kept experimenting, and kept their communities at the heart of everything they do. None of this will disappear in 2026. But how shopkeepers respond to these changes will shape the year ahead more than anything else. Here are the trends I believe will have a meaningful impact in 2026, and how the best independents will use them in their favour. LIVESTREAM SHOPPING BECOMES THE NEW SHOP WINDOW The rise of livestream shopping is impossible to ignore. TikTok Shop has just reported its strongest UK performance yet with live-shopping sales up 68 percent, over the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend. Meanwhile Whatnot has expanded beyond its roots in Pokémon cards and collectibles, to fashion and beauty, and saw UK sales rise more than 400 percent. What I love about this is how naturally it plays into the strengths of independent retailers. Indies are already brilliant at storytelling, curating original products, and building real relationships with their customers. Many are also far more comfortable than they used to be stepping in front of a camera on social media, because they’ve seen how this brings their shops and their personalities to life. Laura, the owner of Fond Shop, Michael, who runs Paper Tiger, and the team at Lark London are just a few examples of independent shopkeepers who do this really well. Livestream shopping is simply the next evolution of that. It gives retailers full control over when and how they sell, offers a low-cost alternative to paid ads, and transforms quieter shop floor moments into opportunities for new connections and sales. I don’t expect every independent retailer to embrace livestreaming overnight. But I do think many more will begin experimenting with it in 2026 as a way to top up sales and increase engagement. The ones who do it best will treat it as an extension of their shop window. RETAILERS WILL CREATE MORE SHOPPING SEASONS Key retail moments like Easter, Halloween, Valentine’s Day are all shifting from single days to extended seasons, filled with decorating, gifting and hosting, and independent retailers have been busy responding. This year we saw cosy autumnal and Halloween homeware appear on shelves from August, alongside a 150 percent rise in small shops ordering Halloween advent calendars from Faire, the first year this product has really landed in the UK. Libby, the owner of Box Party told us she kept increasing her order of these calendars each time they sold out, to meet the demand from shoppers keen to build up to 31st October. I expect this trend to accelerate in 2026, particularly with the World Cup on the horizon. Shoppers will not only be celebrating England and Scotland’s progress, but also the cultures of the host Charlotte Broadbent, UK general manager at Faire looks at how independent retailers will shape the high street in 2026 INDIE POWER!
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