Hi Miriam from PTO.ie here.
Message today is all about Christmas. Sure, what else would you want to talk about during an Irish heat wave - than Christmas and Christmas prep? However from a retail point of view - that 6 to 10 weeks of trade at the end of the year can be worth anything upto 70% of your turnover. So - really important to plan accordingly and effectively.
Few top tips to get you started.
Number one is to start drawing out your calendar for that key peak trading period - so for that eight weeks of peak trade - start drawing up a Calendar of what it looked like last year / who had deals on that would have impacted trade, either positively or negatively last year? / When is Christmas Day - I think it's Tuesday this year and how will it impact? - particularly for those two key weeks of Christmas trading (which are the big bucks weeks, to be fair ). So that's the first thing. . .
Second thing I would look at is stock, and particularly transitional stock. So start thinking about how do you need your stock to flow this year? What were the learns from last year, and any key misses last year - where you didn’t have enough of something or you didn’t potentialise something fully? — that you can make plans for this year. Also worth within that whole stock planning piece of work - start to think about when you go into SALE. When did you go into SALE last year? / when are you likely to go into SALE this year / And do you want to have new transitional full price product at the same time as SALE - because it is a great time with all that additional footfall. It's still a very busy time of the year , and a great time to get full price sales as well. So think about that.
And then the third thing / tip - to get you started on your Christmas planning - would be Cyber weekend. What are your plans here. And I don't just mean this from the digital point of view. For 'bricks and mortar only' retailers - it’s just as important. Note that shopping habits have changed dramatically. A lot of people take the Friday of cyber weekend off , for eg and it’s often the start of their Xmas shopping. Footfall is out there.
So think now - about what value you want to give to your customers. If you’re strategic about it- there’s a great opportunity to give great value to your customers and yet also protect your margin - so worth doing some planning around that now. If you have an online business - it's also worth thinkingabout what your digital strategy is for cyber weekend / around social media / and actually also what deals you want to offer and for how long. Are you going to just have deals on for the weekend? Or for the whole week . Seems to be that cyber weekend getting bigger every year.
So just a few quick top tips. If you're interested in hearing more - give me a shout.
It’s miriam@pto.ie We also run peak planning workshops, where we can help you really potentialise your business for Christmas.
Have a great day and I'll put details of my next course in the messages below. Have a great day!