Stock You Cannot Restock Before Christmas

The shift that happens now

For most of the year a shop sells its range, and anything out of stock is temporarily unavailable.

From the start of November that stops being true, because a reorder placed now may not arrive in time to sell.

So the site is no longer advertising a range, it is selling a specific quantity of specific things.

Arranging it that way, deliberately, is the difference between selling what you have and disappointing people who wanted what you had run out of.

Promote depth, not breadth

The main change, and it goes against the instinct to show everything.

Work out which lines you hold enough of to sell through the season without running out.

Those are the ones that belong on the home page, in the featured positions, and in any advertising.

Promoting something you have four of produces sales you cannot fulfil and customers who found the thing they wanted and cannot have it.

That is worse than not promoting it, because the disappointment is specific and attached to your shop.

The best-selling line is not automatically the right one to feature. The one you hold most of is.

What to do with the thin lines

• Say how many are left, where it is genuine.
• Move them out of featured positions.
• Mark them as not restocking.
• Suggest an alternative on the page.
• Hide them once they are gone.

The third is worth doing explicitly. Telling somebody this will not be back before Christmas converts hesitation into a decision, and it is honest rather than manufactured urgency.

Publish the last order dates

Early, prominently, and before anybody asks.

The date for each delivery option, stated plainly, with what happens after it.

Put it on the home page, in the basket, and on the product pages, since somebody deciding at the last minute is deciding on the strength of that date.

Give yourself margin rather than quoting the courier's date exactly, since the risk is entirely on your side and one missed promise generates more damage than a day of extra sales.

And say what you will do if something arrives late, because saying it in advance is far better than negotiating it in December.

Businesses that publish these early get a rush before each date, which is easier to staff than a continuous scramble.

A worked example

A small shop featured its four best-selling items on the home page every year.

By the first week of December two had sold out, and the pages stayed up because nobody had time to change them.

They received messages daily from people asking when it would be back, which took time to answer and produced nothing.

The following year they featured the four lines they held most of, marked three thin lines as not restocking, and published last order dates in early November.

The out-of-stock messages nearly disappeared, and the marked lines sold out faster than the year before.

Total sales rose without any additional stock being bought.

Handle the sold-out page properly

Since a proportion of traffic will land on one regardless.

Do not delete the page, which produces an error for anybody arriving from a search or a saved link.

Keep it, say plainly that it is sold out and will not return before Christmas, and offer two or three genuine alternatives on the same page.

Offer to notify them when it returns, which converts a lost sale into a January one.

And remove it from the navigation and from any featured position, so nobody is actively sent there.

A sold-out page handled this way recovers a meaningful share of the people who reach it.

Bundle what will not sell alone

The practical use for odd quantities.

Small numbers of unrelated items are difficult to feature and easy to combine.

A bundle presents them as a gift rather than as leftovers, sells the awkward quantities, and gives you something new to promote at a point where the range is otherwise shrinking.

Price it so the value is obvious rather than marginal, since the aim is to move stock rather than to protect margin on items you cannot reorder anyway.

And build the bundles from what you have too much of rather than from what sells well, which is the opposite of the usual instinct.

Keep the stock figures honest

Because everything above depends on knowing what you actually have.

Count it now rather than trusting the system, particularly for anything you have been selling both online and in person.

Decide what happens when the last one sells in the shop while somebody is checking out online, and set the buffer accordingly.

Where the figures are unreliable, a small buffer is better than an oversell, since a cancelled order in December is remembered.

And check it again in the first week of December, since that is when the discrepancies matter most.

Plan the January position now

Worth a few minutes while you are already looking at the stock.

Whatever does not sell is what you will be holding in January, when demand falls and the money is needed for something else.

Decide now which lines you would rather discount in December than carry, and at what point in the month you would do it.

A decision made in advance gets acted on in the second week, and one left open gets acted on in February at a worse price.

The same applies to the notify-me list from your sold-out pages, which is a ready-made January audience if somebody remembers to use it.

The counter-case

This does not apply to everybody.

A business selling made-to-order or digital items has no stock constraint and a completely different set of problems.

Where you can genuinely restock quickly, the whole argument weakens and promoting the best sellers remains right.

And artificial scarcity, marking things as nearly gone when they are not, damages trust and is worse than saying nothing.

Feature what you hold in depth, mark what will not return, publish the dates, and count the stock now.

This week

1. Count what you actually have.
2. Feature the lines you hold most of.
3. Mark thin lines as not restocking.
4. Publish last order dates everywhere.
5. Give yourself margin on those dates.
6. Fix the sold-out pages with alternatives.
7. Bundle the awkward quantities.

Step two is the one that goes against instinct, since the item to promote now is the one you hold most of rather than the one that normally sells best.

Keeping the numbers right in the first place is covered in stock levels you cannot keep accurate.

Frequently asked questions

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