Retail Christmas Forecast: What the Summer Numbers Really Tell Us

The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

Retail strategist Catherine Erdely provides a strategic framework for managing retail inventory during the Christmas season. She emphasizes

Key takeaways

• Avoid using available cash as a buying budget; instead, base procurement on identified gaps in required stock.
• Categorize products into 6-8 major groups to analyze performance without getting lost in granular detail.

Main topics

• Christmas stock procurement strategy
• Sales mix vs. stock mix analysis

Notable quotes

Your buying budget isn't a pot of money you're allowed to spend. It should be based on the stock that you actually need.

Conclusion

Successful Christmas retailing requires strategic gap-filling rather t

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) This episode is brought to you by Capify. There are two sides to a loan application, the credit score and the story behind it. At Capify, they look beyond just the numbers. They look at the business owner chasing invoices, paying wages, managing cash flow and planning the next job. And because every application is reviewed by a real person, they can take the time to understand your business. So if you're a limited company, it's worth applying even if your credit history isn't perfect. Speaker 1 (0:32) Make sure you listen to this episode before you buy anything else for Christmas. Now, I know I said I was going to do a four podcast series to help you get ready for Christmas, but this is actually episode number five on the same theme because I realized that there was one aspect that I didn't really delve into in the other four that I wanted to make sure I went through with you today, and that is getting your stock ready for Christmas. Just before we get into today's episode, I wanted to remind you that if you head over to resilientretailclub.com slash Christmas, you can get my freebie download all about getting ready for Christmas with a template and a PDF guide. So don't miss out. Welcome to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Erdely, and this podcast is here to share retail industry trends, insights and best practices for you, the retailer who's serious about building something that lasts. Speaker 1 (1:24) So the Christmas buying season is well underway. You may well have been to the trade shows. You may have placed many of your orders, but there will still be things coming at you that are looking tempting. You'll be hearing from your suppliers. You may be seeing sales reps. You may have more shows that you're going to see or just be receiving emails and catalogs constantly. So the temptation to keep buying is really very strong. And it's easy to keep buying when it's Christmas because Christmas is so important. And there's always another gorgeous range. There's always another supplier and another thing that you're convinced is going to be absolutely crucial. But before you place any more Christmas orders, I want you to stop and ask, is your stock actually ready for Christmas? And more importantly, where are the genuine gaps? Because the question I don't want you to ask is how much money have I got left to spend? Because having £5,000, for example, available to spend doesn't necessarily mean that you need £5,000 worth of stock. Your buying budget isn't a pot of money you're allowed to spend. It should be based on the stock that you actually need. So how do you figure out if your stock is ready for Christmas? Well, if you go back to episode 316, where I talked about the first steps that you needed to take to get ready for Christmas, a lot of this is the same as the first steps that you need to take to start getting ready to figure out if you've got the right stock. You need to think about what happened last Christmas first. Look at both your November and December sales and ask yourself, what sold brilliantly? What I sold out of? What did I wish I'd bought more of? What do I have far too much of? And what was I still staring at in January? You don't want to just look at your individual bestsellers, but you really want to break your business down into categories. For me, one of the biggest issues that I see with small businesses and one of the biggest pieces of work that we do in Stock Doctor when we're helping people really clean their data and get ready to make better decisions from it is we have to get them to look at their business in a series of departments or product areas. So for example, if you just look at your best sellers and it's a list and it says that you sold six of this candle and seven of that candle and three of that wax melt, it may mean that you're getting a lot of detail, but you're missing the big picture. You're missing the big categories within your business. So everybody has probably around six to eight categories that it would be really helpful if you could just look at those all together. So for example, If you are a gift home lifestyle store, you might have one category which is home fragrance. You might have one which is kitchen and kitchen implements or kitchen accessories. You might have one which is well-being. You might have one which is clothing, one which is accessories and so on and so forth. You're going to have these big blocks of product areas and looking at those individually is going to be what really helps you understand if your stock is ready for Christmas. If you've got 15 or 20 of them, then you may find that it's a bit too granular. There's too much detail. See if you can put some of them together. For example, if you have got one which is bags and one which is jewelry and one which is scarves and one which is gloves, could you put all