Black Friday: what to get done in twelve weeks

Black Friday in retail is not a day. Marketplaces stretch it into a week or two, and shoppers start comparing prices even earlier. But that is not the main point. The main point is that almost all the work that decides how the peak goes gets done two to three months ahead of it — and by November it is simply too late to start.

So the calendar below is built backward. Not "what to do for Black Friday," but "what can you still get done from wherever you are right now."

Twelve weeks out

This is the last point where you can still influence what you will actually be selling.

Forecast per SKU, not by total revenue

The most common mistake is taking last season’s turnover and multiplying it by growth. That gives you a number you cannot act on: you order units, not money.

The right way: how many units of each fast-moving item sold in the same season last year, adjusted for how much the store has grown since. And separately — a list of items that were out of stock back then. They sold less than they could have, and using last year’s number as your baseline means ordering too little a second time.

If you do not have last year’s numbers, that is an answer too: this year you are ordering blind, and it is smarter to keep a narrower range than to freeze money deep in the warehouse.

Order early

The time from paying your supplier to having stock in the warehouse is not the production time. Work out your own from your last order: payment date, date stock was logged in. The difference is your real lead time, customs, transit, and your supplier’s own holidays included.

Simple arithmetic follows: if your lead time is two and a half months, an order placed in November arrives in time for the January slump, not the peak.

Eight weeks out

Calculate margin before you agree on a discount

This is the step most often skipped, and it is exactly the one that makes a record-revenue peak a loss. The order has to be: calculation first, discount depth second. Never the other way around.

Subtract from the sale price: your cost with shipping and duty, the marketplace’s commission for your category, the shipping you pay, and losses on refused or returned parcels. Check your own commission rate in your seller dashboard — it depends on category, and someone else’s number is worth nothing here.

If what is left after that is less than you thought, change the discount, not the explanation. The full formula is in store unit economics.

Marketplace promo applications

Marketplaces close submissions weeks before the sale itself and require a minimum discount depth. Dates change every year, so your seller dashboard is the only reliable source. Miss the deadline and you will be in the catalog during peak week, but not in the promo selection shoppers are actually browsing.

Four weeks out

Warm up your ads

A campaign launched during peak week spends the whole peak learning: the algorithm is just starting to figure out who to show it to, and it does that in the most expensive week of the year. Get it out of the learning phase ahead of time — three to four weeks out, on the budget you are already spending.

Landing pages and creative

Built now, not during promo week. During promo week you are doing something else — watching stock levels and answering customers.

Build your list

A list built in October makes December cheap: people who already know the store do not cost you a second click. It is the cheapest channel of the whole peak, and the only way to use it is to start a month ahead.

One week out: operational readiness

• Packaging with a buffer and confirmed extra hands for packing — not "if it gets busy."
• Confirmed volumes with your carrier.
• Tested site load. How long a shopper waits before the page even starts rendering is a separate number, and during peak it fails where it held up fine in August.
• A tested backup-power and connectivity plan, so an outage does not stop order processing.
• Published shipping deadlines. Otherwise you will get that question forty times over chat — instead of an order.

What you do not do during peak week

You do not launch a new platform, restructure your catalog, roll out a CRM, or switch carriers. All of that is summer-and-early-autumn work. During the peak, any change costs more than the problem it solves.

Where to start

Take a calendar and count backward from the last Friday of November. Mark four points: twelve weeks, eight, four, one. Against each — what on this list is not done yet.

If the first point has already passed, that is not a reason to do nothing: stock is already committed, but margin, promo, ads, and operations are not. The full year’s calendar — every season, with what to do before, during, and after each — lives in the seasonal calendar.