A few weeks before National Day, something starts to change around you, even if you are not looking for it.

Flags appear in shop windows. Storefronts take on a new look. Social feeds fill with offers. And products you might barely have noticed a few weeks earlier suddenly seem to be everywhere.

That green T-shirt you would probably have walked straight past in March suddenly makes sense. The decoration you did not need before now feels just right for the house. Even the box of sweets you were going to buy anyway somehow feels better when it comes in packaging made for the next family visit.

And somewhere, someone is watching all of this happen.

Maybe they are scrolling through their phone in the evening, moving from one store to another, watching demand take shape in front of them: an outfit here, a restaurant booking there, a gift, something for the kids, something for the house.

They may not even be a merchant. They may not be looking for a business opportunity at all.

But they are noticing something we see every season:

How do ordinary products suddenly become more appealing simply because their moment has arrived?

The product itself may be exactly the same as it was yesterday. The same fabric. The same taste. The same box. Maybe even the same price.

What changed was everything around it.

The season.

The same product, a different moment

Take a green piece of clothing.

On an ordinary day, you would judge it the way you judge anything else: Do I like it? Does it suit me? Do I need it? Is it worth the price?

Put that exact same item in front of someone a few days before National Day, and suddenly there is another question in the decision:

What am I going to wear that day?

The quality of the item has not suddenly improved. Its basic purpose has not changed.

What changed is the context in which it will be worn.

The same thing happens with food.

A meal that would normally just be dinner becomes part of a gathering. An ordinary box of sweets becomes something you bring when visiting family or friends. A toy becomes part of the children's celebration. Home decorations suddenly have a clear occasion to belong to. A gift that was never on your shopping list appears there because now there is a social moment worth arriving at with something in your hand.

That is why we can see the same product dozens of times without giving it a second thought, only for one season to make it feel almost new.

Sometimes the product does not change. The moment from which we see it does.

And this is more than an interesting observation about the way people shop.

When we looked at the numbers across stores on Salla, we found the same story playing out at a much bigger scale.

What does Salla's data tell us?

We compared total sales value across categories on Salla between 1 September and 1 October 2025 with the same period in 2024.

And the first thing that stands out is not one category making an extraordinary jump.

It is how widely the growth stretches across very different types of commerce.

Sales in beauty and personal care reached around 43.6 million, compared with 19 million during the same period a year earlier, representing 129% growth.

In fashion, sales rose from around 8.3 million to 18.3 million, an increase of 120%.

Food and groceries moved from roughly 4 million to 8.5 million, growing by 112%, while accessories and gifts increased from around 2.8 million to 5.8 million, up 106%.

Those numbers are already significant.

But the picture gets even more interesting when you look at the other categories.

Restaurants and cafés grew by 132%. Health and fitness grew by 131%. Toys rose 127%, while home supplies grew by 121%.

Even electronics, a category that may not immediately come to mind when someone says "National Day products", recorded 97% growth. Digital products grew by 77%, and jewellery by 67%.

But rather than rushing past those percentages, it is worth stopping for a moment.

Beauty and personal care did not simply add a few million in sales. It moved from around 19 million to more than 43 million over the equivalent period from one year to the next.

Fashion more than doubled. So did food, accessories, and gifts.

Even categories we do not automatically associate with National Day saw significant growth.

And that breadth is perhaps the most interesting part of the picture.

It suggests that seasonal momentum does not necessarily concentrate around a small group of obviously seasonal products. It can spread across many different needs whose importance changes as people's lives change around an occasion.

You could read the list simply as a performance table: one category grew 129%, another 120%, another 112%.

But try reading it again.

This time, forget the category names and think about what people are actually doing.

Beauty, fashion, and accessories tell part of the story of how we want to look.

Restaurants, cafés, and food tell us how and where we gather.

Home products become part of the spaces where we host and celebrate.

Toys enter the experience of children and families.

Gifts and jewellery become the things we choose to give to other people.

Suddenly, the numbers do not feel quite so random.

In their own way, they reveal what life looks like around the season.

The product is not always the secret

That leads to an important idea for any merchant looking at the season and wondering how they can benefit from the momentum.

Perhaps the question itself needs to change.

The easiest approach is to search for a "National Day product": a flag, a green mug, a T-shirt, a pin, or anything carrying the symbols of the occasion.

And there is certainly a market for those products.

But they do not explain why growth stretches from fashion and beauty to food, home, toys, and electronics.

What connects these categories is not that they sell the same things.

It is that they can become part of the behaviors that change around the occasion.

And that is the key:

the season.

A season can change why someone buys, when they buy, and how important one product feels compared with another.

Something that was "maybe later" suddenly needs to be bought before a specific date.

Something the customer was not looking for at all becomes relevant because it is now part of a plan:

What will I wear?

Where are we going?

What will we serve?

How will we prepare the house?

What will the kids need?

That may be exactly what makes seasons so commercially interesting.

A product does not always have to be seasonal by nature to benefit from a season.

Sometimes all that needs to change is the moment people need it, the reason they start thinking about it, or the priority they give it compared with an ordinary week.

Why do we do this in the first place?

In the simplest version of economics, we might imagine that people buy things because they need the function those things provide.

We buy clothes to wear them. Food to eat it. Gifts because we want to give something to someone else.

But consumer behavior is broader than that.

Products can carry social and symbolic meaning, and the context in which we consume them can influence the value we see in them.

That becomes even clearer around shared occasions and rituals.

What we eat, what we wear, what we give, and how we decorate a space are not completely separate from the occasion itself.

They can become part of how we participate in it.

That is why we may buy something even when we know we will not use it very often afterwards, without the decision being as irrational as it might first appear.

We are not judging its value only by how many days it will stay with us.

We are also judging it by the value of the moment it becomes part of.

You might wear something once, but it appears in the photographs you keep.

The decorations may come down after a few days, but they were part of what the house looked like when the family came together.

The box of sweets may be finished that same evening, but it was never supposed to last.

Some products do not get their value from how long they stay with us, but from the strength of the moment they enter.

Don't just ask: What can I sell for National Day?

Look at the numbers again.

If the opportunity were limited to products that directly carry a National Day identity, we would not expect to see such a wide range of categories growing.

And that creates a much bigger opportunity for merchants.

If you sell fashion, the question is not simply:

Do I have something green?

It is:

What does my customer want to wear for this occasion?

If you sell food:

How will gatherings, visits, and orders change?

If you sell home products:

What will people want to prepare?

If you are in beauty:

What becomes part of someone's preparation to go out and celebrate?

Even a product that does not look "National Day" in the slightest can find a place in the season if it connects to a behavior that becomes more important during it.

And that is the difference between a store that puts the occasion onto the product and one that understands where its product fits into the occasion.

The first starts with the color and the logo.

The second starts with the person.

But the numbers tell us something else too

Big growth is exciting.

But it does not mean the season guarantees success for every store that joins in.

In fact, it can mean the opposite.

When customers become more ready to spend, huge numbers of merchants move to compete for the same attention.

During Saudi Arabia's 95th National Day season in 2025, the Ministry of Commerce announced 4,218 licences for discounts and promotional offers, covering more than 3.5 million products.

So customers do not enter the season simply looking for something to buy.

They enter it surrounded by an enormous number of products, discounts, and messages competing for their attention.

That is why it is not enough to know that the season matters.

You need to know why your product matters within it.

Maybe it is the price.

Maybe it is being able to get the product quickly before the occasion.

Maybe it is a collection created specifically for gatherings.

Maybe it is packaging that makes an everyday product feel ready to gift.

Maybe it is a video showing customers how an outfit will actually look during the celebration.

Or perhaps it is an offer that brings together everything they need for one occasion, rather than making them search for each product separately.

The season creates momentum.

But the season alone does not decide which store that momentum will go to.

Now go back to that person

The person scrolling through their phone at the beginning of this article is still there.

But perhaps what they see has changed.

They are no longer looking only at green storefronts and similar discounts.

They can see what sits behind them.

Someone getting ready.

A family coming together.

A child celebrating.

A friend looking for a gift.

A home being prepared.

A food order becoming bigger because there will be more people around the table.

And a product may appear in front of them that they would have seen in any other month without thinking twice about it.

Now, they understand why it suddenly matters.

Not because the product woke up in September and somehow became more valuable on its own.

But because people's plans changed.

Their priorities changed.

The moments they were preparing for changed.

And perhaps that is the most important thing we can take from all those millions and percentages:

Markets do not move on their own. People move first, and commerce moves with them.

So before asking yourself next season:

"What should I sell?"

There may be a more useful question:

"What will people be doing differently?"

Watch the answer closely.

Your product may have been sitting in front of you all year.

It may simply have been waiting for the right moment.

So, what will you do with this season?

If you are looking at these numbers and thinking about starting a business, or you already have a store and want to make the most of National Day momentum, Salla's National Day 96 offer brings the next step a little closer.

This year, Salla is offering one of its strongest promotions of the year:

50% off for eligible new merchants when subscribing to Plus or Pro for one or two years, and 30% off for eligible current and previous merchants, alongside a guarantee for the first five orders for new merchants, subject to campaign terms and conditions.

The point is not that the season will create success for you.

As we have seen throughout this article, the momentum is there, but merchants still need to understand where their products fit into people's lives, then prepare the offer, store, and shopping experience for the moment.

The season may give your product its moment. The offer may bring your next step closer. What you do with the opportunity is up to you.

Make the most of the National Day 96 offer

Sources

• Salla data — Category-level data covering 1 September to 1 October in 2024 and 2025.

• Saudi Ministry of Commerce — ⁠More than 4,200 licenses for discounts and offers for the 95th National Day

• Rook, D. W. (1985) — ⁠The Ritual Dimension of Consumer Behavior, Journal of Consumer Research.

• McCracken, G. (1986) — ⁠Culture and Consumption: A Theoretical Account of the Structure and Movement of the Cultural Meaning of Consumer Goods, Journal of Consumer Research.

• Wallendorf, M. & Arnould, E. J. (1991) — ⁠“We Gather Together”: Consumption Rituals of Thanksgiving Day, Journal of Consumer Research.