Make 2025 the Year You’re Ready for the Christmas Rush

Christmas can sneak up on us, can’t it? We’re happily enjoying the warmer, summer months, and then all of a sudden, there are advent calendars everywhere, and only a few Saturdays left to get all the gifts, decorate the tree and make those cherished memories.

For many businesses, product-based ones mainly, the Christmas season is the most profitable, but also the most chaotic and critical time of year. A lot rests on the success of the weeks and months leading up to the big holiday. If you’re not careful and fail to prepare accordingly, inventory can get tight, customer service standards can slip, selling opportunities can get missed, and the whole process can become extremely overwhelming. In a time when everyone appears to be operating on overdrive at work, socially and for their families, the more you can offer reliability and stability to your customers, the greater their brand loyalty is likely to be.

If the thought of Christmas within your business makes you feel instantly anxious and uptight, it’s time to approach it differently. For your own sake, make 2025 the year you’re ready.

Here’s how to get ahead of the madness…

Plan, Now

It might seem early, but the best-prepared businesses are not only thinking but actively preparing for Christmas months in advance. Although we’re halfway through quarter 3, there’s still time to get ahead and thank yourself later. Here’s what you need to be considering:

• What are your precise Christmas goals? Is it all about sales? Do you want to grow your email list while most people are having some time off? Are you tactically launching a product for the new year? Do you want to increase your number of leads for 2026? Whatever it is, make it known.
• Review last year’s performance: Look back at last Christmas using both statistics and your intuition – What worked well and what was a disaster? Were there elements you want to avoid this year, and what do you wish you had thought about? Sometimes, previous mistakes are the best tools for learning.
• Get the calendar out: Make it big, give details and be bold. Include deadlines, customer timeframes, product showcases, festive promotions, ad campaigns, content plans and expected lead times for deliveries. You’ll need to work backwards in order to hit your time goals, so be as clear as you can and give yourself a buffer.

Understand Your Inventory and Supply Chain

Christmas sales are a different breed from the rest of the year; people are panicked, customer expectations are high, and suppliers are all feeling the same strain as you. It’s best to expect issues to arise and prepare accordingly; it only takes one knock in the chain for the whole process to be affected. Delays, shortages and unreliability can wreck Christmas sales.

• Give yourself leeway: Add extra time in as a buffer for yourself, whether it’s for manufacturing, packing, deliveries or content output, give yourself the gift of time
• Forecasting demand: Analyse last year’s performance, as well as how the past year has been. Anticipate what customers will want, then prepare for more (if your finances and resources allow you to).
• Lock in suppliers early: Working with your proposed festive lead times, have the conversations with additional support as soon as possible. Plan for the extra costs, confirm the services you’re going to need and book in the time to get any additional administrative jobs done.
• Have a plan for extra restocks and backups: Make sure you have contingency options for restocks and popular items.

Build Hype Early

People are shopping earlier every year. The cost of living crisis, paired with overwhelmed parents, has meant that people not only want to spread the cost of Christmas, but also lessen the stress of it. Therefore, your promotions, email lists, and social media content need to be good to go by early October.

• Tease your holiday deals early: Start building intrigue for new and seasonal products, give your audience ideas for great gifts and inspire them to get organised with their gift giving.
• Grow your audience: Use the summer and autumn to grow your audience on social media and within your email list. You’ll need to be consistently putting out content to attract potential customers to build your following. Then you can retarget specific audiences with relevant products and offers for them.
• Create a content kit: Get your blog posts drafted and finalised, create the social media graphics you’ll need, as well as your gift guides and email campaigns in advance. By having them prepped and ready to use, you won’t be rushing and ending up with half-hearted materials that won’t do your conversions any favours.

Are you conversion-ready?

Once the seasonal customers start to roll in, you need to ensure your website is a nice place to be. Is it desirable to buy from? Is navigation easy, and are the purchasing steps simple? Otherwise, your efforts to get your target audience where you want them, may be wasted. Put these tasks high up on your Christmas to-do list, you’ll thank yourself all year round too!

• Audit your website now: Imagine you’re a customer and take a fresh look at your website. Does it all make sense? Are there elements that are annoying, such as confusing navigation, pop-ups, or a complicated checkout process? Fix any bugs and update your copy to reflect your current business, too.
• Create irresistible offers: What would entice you to commit to buying? What will make you stand out within the market? Bundles, discount codes for subscribers,  limited-time deals, free gifts with certain spending, and free delivery all encourage purchases.
• Use fear of loss: Let customers know when stock is low or a deal is coming to an end; FOMO is not to be laughed at!

Prepare Your Team and Processes

Seasonal success relies on more than just products and promotions. Who facilitates them and how they go about it will determine the level of payoff.

• Train your staff in good time: Whether it’s customer service or warehouse fulfilment, everyone should know their plan of action well in advance of busy periods so they’re not panicked or overwhelmed when the time comes.
• Automate where possible: Set up automated emails for order updates and abandoned carts, and ensure they are as informed as possible for the customer.
• Be ready to ramp up: Everything and everyone should be ready for increased volume, so what do your stock levels look like, and does your website reflect that in real-time? Where are you storing everything, and is it organised in a way that’s easy to fulfil? What are your delivery processes? Do you know your limits, and have you provisioned for additional services?

And breathe. Oh wait…

Don’t forget your post-Christmas strategy! The tree might be wilting, but your job isn’t over. You’ll need to plan for:

• January sales and clearance: You won’t want loads of Christmas-specific items hanging around until next year, so make sure you have a plan to move leftover inventory quickly. You could utilise discounts or rework your marketing campaigns to promote January sales for the buyer instead of Christmas gifts for others. Could you even set up a ‘January Sales Wishlist’ function for shoppers to ‘favourite’ items while Christmas shopping for others?…
• Returns and customer service: Although it can be disheartening, there may well be returns and refunds to honour. Ensure your policies are clear to your audience, and don’t require much legwork from your team with regards to back-and-forth correspondence.
• Customer retention: You will have hopefully earned yourself a chunk of new customers thanks to gift-givers who may now be following you on social media, signing up to your email list, and even ordering from you themselves already! Your marketing campaigns should now focus on creating loyal fans from those who received products from your brand over Christmas. We all know word-of-mouth advertising is the cream of the crop, so don’t let the momentum dwindle once you have their attention.

Make sure you’re training for race day

The businesses that win at Christmas are those that prepare long before it’s on the consumer’s wavelength. We’ve all been surprised by boxes of Quality Street on the shelves, but bought one anyway… By starting now, you’ll not only ease the stress in December, a time when you yourself would probably like to enjoy the festivities with loved ones, but you’ll maximise your profit and sales impact. What a great way to end the year.

2025 is your year to be ready.

Did all these tasks seem overwhelming? Here’s how we can help prepare your business for the chaos of Christmas: additional storage, warehousing, fulfilment, logistics and deliveries.

Speak to us about our warehousing and fulfilment services. We cover the whole of the UK, and our logistics software aligns perfectly with yours for efficient journey and inventory management.

Call our team on: 01603 408143

Email us at: info@concordetransport.co.uk