With the end of the year rolling around, more and more people are starting to buy their gifts for the holidays. According to a survey from Bankrate, nearly half of Americans will start holiday shopping before Halloween. It’s been a major shift from how people typically shop for the holidays, brought on by the covid pandemic. But whether consumers decide to go back to shopping later in the season or continue their earlier shopping, there’s no denying that Black Friday and Cyber Monday continue to dominate as the popular shopping days, with 76 million people alone participating in in-person shopping for 2024!
From its start in the 1950s as a way of identifying higher shopping periods in Philadelphia, to its growing popularity nationwide in the 1980s, to the term Cyber Monday being coined in 2005, it has certainly grown to be an essential time for businesses and their sales. But with big buying comes big shipping, and with all of that product moving around, it can certainly put a massive strain on supply chains and cause major headaches for both sellers and consumers.
Supply Chain Headaches
The first hurdle that comes up is inventory planning. Nobody has a crystal ball, so figuring out what products to ship is difficult. Order too little and you’ll have stockouts that cause frustration and distrust with your customers. Order too many and you’ll have overstock inventory that you’ll need to figure out what to do with, often causing losses in revenue.
Finding the balance of stocking can also be challenging as trends change constantly. Sometimes a product is expected to do great, only for it to become a major flop like Google Glass, 3D TVs, and Microsoft’s Zune. Other times, there will be products that experience a major boom in sales out of the blue, like the iPad, air fryers, and the Casper Mattress. From poor marketing and outdated technology to influencer endorsements and revolutionary fixes to our day-to-day lives, it’s hard to tell what flies off the shelves and what flops in the clearance bin, especially in our highly connected world filled with social media, where everybody turns to find out what’s trending and what deals are going on.
Another challenge that comes up is shipping. For most of the year, freight carriers are running at maximum capacity for their shipments. So you can imagine that during the holidays, the loads will increase even further. This usually results in delays and fulfillment issues for shipments being ordered. This is especially true for international shipments that are choked up at ports, where a significant amount of product is being moved around on a daily basis.
On top of that, even if your shipments arrive in a timely manner, there’s the matter of returns. Since people are trying to figure out what others want for the season, many are going to return items that they bought for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, leading to massive product loads and massive headaches for the logistics team. Some of these products may be unopened, some may be used and damaged, and some may have a particular return policy for how these items get shipped back!
Additionally, you have to take into consideration how all of this affects your inventory management systems, making sure your data is accurate, and taking into account how market conditions are with variables like tariffs and inflation. It’s certainly a lot of variables to think about, and it can be a highly stressful and delicate time. However, there are strategies that you can take to try to mitigate and ease these difficulties during this time of year, and they are good practices year-round, too!
Strategies For The Black Friday and Cyber Monday Season
While Black Friday and Cyber Monday can be a volatile time, there are options people can take to minimize delays and stress. First, figuring out what inventory you need is key. With the continuous advancements in technology, like AI, predictive analytics, and inventory management, they have become easier than ever! Utilizing these technologies and keeping track of previous seasons’ histories can help shape what inventory to stock up on and what not to add for the season.
That also means considering the resources you have available and determining if anything needs to be added, repaired, or preplaced. Whether that means hiring new staff or acquiring new tools or machines to keep distribution and shipping running smoothly, adding to your resources can also help with your customers’ experience. With the rising demand for the holidays, customers will need help navigating what to buy, how to return items, and keeping clear communication and expectations for their experience. This helps keep customer service down and keeps your focus on the important logistics at hand. Whether this is online, in-store, or both, clear communication is key to happier customer experiences.
When getting items shipped, it’s good to diversify the carriers you use. If you only use one, the risk of delays and issues rises, leading to potential stockouts and frustrated customers. Instead, with a diversified carrier system, if one of your carriers has issues, you can pivot to have your other carriers pick up the slack and assist with future shipments that need to go out, especially for items that have high demand and are forecasted to sell out quickly. Another strategy is to consolidate shipments. This also means having clear communication with your team. From manufacturers to carriers, having that clear and continuous communication helps keep expectations met and orders more timely.
Investing in up-to-date tech will also help keep you competitive with others. That means making sure things like your inventory management systems and your order management systems are in sync, up to date, and fulfilling tasks like real-time inventory updates and auto-restocks. It also means utilizing systems with AI and predictive forecasting on customer data to try and get as much of an edge in the competition as possible. Keeping these systems close together, monitoring, and verifying them also helps keep your data accurate throughout the season.
Another effective strategy that many retailers have adopted is to extend their sales window. Instead of putting all of your product sales into a few days, consider extending them over a week of sales or even hyping up the month of November to have surprise drops throughout the season. This way, it can keep customers engaged with your business while lowering the shipping burden on your carriers. This also helps with quality control, as instead of needing to rush a whole bunch of product to be delivered at once, it allows for a more manageable timeline of when products can be delivered. Maintaining clear communication regarding delivery expectations with manufacturers also helps ensure quality control of the products you ship.
With all of these tips in mind, navigating your supply chain needs for Black Friday and Cyber Monday will certainly be easier. While nothing is certain and issues may still arise, having the knowledge and tools at hand makes running your business easier and more manageable! So that, at least, you have one less thing to worry about over the holidays!
