With Christmas quickly on the horizon, it goes without saying that some businesses are in their full flow. Particularly in retail, this is one of the biggest periods of the year, and can make or break a company’s profits.
Bearing this in mind, preparing adequately is absolutely key. Whether you are a small player, or a global company, any mistake can be magnified and leave your Christmas sales in tatters.
This is the reason behind today’s article, as we take a look at some of the best tips you can adopt to give your company the best possible chance of posting big profits over December.
Make sure you have the staff
One of the worst things you can do at this time of year is not being able to keep up with the pace of Christmas. In other words, you don’t scale up based on your increase in customers.
While it might be a bigger upfront cost, don’t think twice about investing in your staff. You might have to set up an employee benefits program, or something else to tempt the numbers in, but the very worst thing that can happen here is you not having sufficient manpower to deal with the festive onslaught of shoppers!
Do some tech testing
We’ve spoken about an increase in customers, and how you must have capacity in relation to the number of staff that you take on during the Christmas period.
However, this capacity stretches far further than manpower. It also affects your technology, and specifically whether your website is able to cope with this increased demand.
Sure, it’s a nice problem to have, but if you don’t plan accordingly you might have a barrage of new visitors but no website to greet them with.
Keep a close eye on last year’s figures
As we all know, the retail landscape is constantly changing. Several years ago, it was all about the build-up to Christmas, and then the January sales.
Now, the outlook can be a little different. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have well and truly taken over, and this has meant that retailers have had to adapt.
As such, keep an eye on last year’s figures. Find out what went well, what didn’t and most importantly, just the dates you need to plan around.
Beware of the perils of shrinkage
In truth, it doesn’t matter whether this is about Christmas or summer shopping – the same rules about shrinkage apply. The only difference with the festive season, like we have said in relation to other issues, is that the scale just tends to be so much bigger.
Naturally, the biggest shrinkage issue comes in the form of theft. With so many people going through your doors, items can sometimes follow them. This is one of the reasons why you again need sufficient staffing numbers, while it’s also worth remembering that returns are high around this time of year so this might be something else you need to factor into the month.