The holiday season. The holy grails of the retail experience, Black Friday and Christmas… Its a great time to be in the business, but it doesn’t come without its problems. If we’re just getting started, trying to get in on the Holiday rush is going to come with its fair share of frustration. Suppliers are quite busy, and your application, through no fault of your own, may just plain fall through the cracks while they’re rushing to try and keep their heads above water with all the inbound orders. And even if we are already set up with our supplier, that does not mean we’re home free. Things get busy, and even the best supplier can drop the ball, and put us in a bad position if we’re not ready for it.
Christmas and Black Friday are the poster children of this phenomenon, but they are not the only holiday offenders out there. Even ignoring the big ones, like Halloween, or Easter, we’ll still need to become very aware of what times are of significance to our specific demographic. If we’re selling paintball guns, is there a paintball super event that we need to be aware of? Is there a season when demand for our products is going to be off the charts? These may seem like very simple questions to ask, but many forget about them until it’s too late.
The significance to these questions is because they will have a very real and very potent effect on our suppliers’ ability to meet our orders. If we know that there is going to be a massive movement in our industry during a certain time of year, we want to plan ahead well in advance. Let our customers know there may be delays in processing their orders, make sure our suppliers’ inventory levels are high. The last thing we want to do is have a major event roll in, and have us caught entirely unawares.
Holidays or special events are always an excuse for a buyer to be a little spend-happy, and that’s a great force for us to work with to our advantage. However, we need to keep on top of our suppliers, and make sure they have the inventory and the ability to keep pace with the demand, because in the holiday frenzy, if anything goes wrong, its going to become a giant headache for everyone involved, but by keeping the lines of communication open, and the remaining inventory watched diligently, we can avoid a lot of the normal holiday frustration, and make it a happy one instead!
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