Winter holidays, fourth quarter, Christmas — whatever you want to call it, there’s no doubt that November and December are the busiest season months for retail. 

Let’s look at the stats, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF): ​ 

Black Friday: The day after Thanksgiving
​This was the most popular day for in-store shopping in 2017, cited by 77 million consumers, according to the NRF. If you’ve actively promoted your Black Friday promotions, be ready for lots of foot traffic. 

These shoppers are looking for deals — you’ll want to promote your biggest discounts on Black Friday. This is a good time to slash prices on slow sellers from Q3 or soon-to-be-outdated fall product lines.

Remember to make it easy to navigate the store, keep walkways clear, and spread your most popular or anticipated items throughout your store. ​

Small Business Saturday: The Saturday after Thanksgiving
The second-most popular day for in-store shopping was Small Business Saturday, with 55 million consumers. According to the 2017 Small Business Saturday Consumer Insights Survey, the most popular businesses were:

1.  Restaurants, bars, and pubs (41%)
2.  Clothing and accessories stores (24%)
3.  Food stores (23%)
4.  Coffee shops (22%)

Use this day to promote your locally sourced wares or products that give back. 

Learn how to make the most of each day from Black Friday through Giving Tuesday.

For small businesses, it’s not enough to know how to merchandise, manage, and optimize inventory because just knowing something doesn’t help if you can’t put that knowledge to work.
​
For many entrepreneurs and small brands, the benefits of strategic inventory management are unlocked only by doing the work, which begs the question:

When, in your already busy schedule, should you implement merchandising and reporting practices that drive profit without sacrificing other operational practices?

In the search to study and learn from the success of others in our industry, you’ll be hard pressed to find a merchant who willingly ignores the growth potential inherent in understanding their financial results.

Even the most intuitive retail buyers — ones that lead with gut and instinct — look to key performance indicators to evaluate the choices they’ve made around customer experience.

Retailers highlight new or key products through well-planned and shoppable merchandise presentations in order to promote full price selling.

Sale merchandise and slow-moving stock, on the other hand, are rarely romanced the way new or popular products are. As a result, the desirability and profitability of that inventory plummets.

But what if it doesn’t have to? What if you could sell slow-moving stock at full retail price by doing more of the things you’re probably already doing?