The Resilient Retail Game Plan - retail insights, retail trends and best practices

If your Christmas promotional strategy is "20% off everything", then you probably haven't got a Christmas promotional strategy.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Capify - business funding made simple. Find out more at capify.com
This is the final episode in my four-part Get Set for Christmas series, and it tackles the bit most independent retailers leave until a panicked evening in November: the promotions. The fourth quarter has become the noisiest, most discount-driven time of the year, and when every other brand starts shouting about money off, it's very easy to react, slash prices and find yourself at the end of December with a great sales figure and no profit to show for it.
In this episode I walk you through the seven types of promotion available to you, from the most premium to the most distressed, and explain why I think of them as a continuum. Some barely move sales at all but do wonders for your relationship with your customers. Some absolutely will drive sales, but every time you use them they work a little less well and your brand looks a little more worried. I also share the one question you should ask before you run any discount, the mistake I see big high street names making over and over again, and my honest view on whether you need to take part in Black Friday at all.
By the end you'll be able to build a week-by-week promotional calendar for the whole of Q4 that hits your sales goals, delights your customers, looks after your VIPs and leaves your margin intact, so that when the busy months arrive you can focus on selling rather than working out what to say next.
Chapters
00:00 If your strategy is "20% off everything"
01:31 What a promotion really is, and who discounts are actually for
05:56 The seven types of promotion, from giveaway to red sale
13:55 Your Q4 timeline: what to do in September, October, November and December

Resources and links
Free Christmas guide and week-by-week planner: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/christmas
Episode 316, Retail Christmas Planning: Why Independent Retailers Should Start in August: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast-episode/christmas-planning-for-independent-retailers/
Episodes 317 and 318 (cash flow, and your Christmas product range)
All episodes of the Resilient Retail Game Plan: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly

The Resilient Retail Game Plan shares retail industry trends, insights, and best practices for the retailer who's serious about building something that lasts. New episodes every Thursday morning.
Mentioned in this episode:
Capify

The biggest Christmas mistake I see is not ordering too little. It is trying to stock everything.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsor Capify - business funding made simple. Find out more at Capify
Every year I watch independent retailers try to turn themselves into a one-stop shop for December. More lines, more categories, more just-in-case. And every year the same thing happens. The money goes out across everything, the shop looks busy, and the sales still land on a small handful of products you could probably have named back in August. It is not about having everything. It is about having the right things. The reason most of us get that wrong is that we plan Christmas as though it were one single, homogeneous block of spending.
It is not. Your customers are not walking in to buy "Christmas". They are on missions, and every one of those missions has its own budget, its own timing and its own deadline. The Secret Santa buyer and the Christmas Eve panic buyer are not the same person, they are not spending the same money, and they will not be in your shop in the same week. In this episode I walk through the buying missions that actually make up December, roughly what each one is worth, and when each one turns up. Once you see them written down, the gaps in your range become uncomfortably obvious.
Then I get to the part that quietly decides your whole December: your hero products. The small group of lines that will carry the majority of your Christmas sales, why identifying them now changes how you market, price and reorder everything else, and why your strongest one probably does not look remotely festive. By the end you will know exactly which lists to make this week, which gaps to fill before the autumn trade shows, and where the room is to try something new without gambling your peak season on it. Press play and I will walk you through it.
CHAPTERS
00:00 The one-stop shop mistake, and what to do instead
01:16 Think like a Christmas shopper: the missions people are actually on
06:11 Hero products: the 20% that will carry your Christmas
08:51 Filling the gaps, and the 20% where you get to have some fun
LINKS
Free Get Set for Christmas planner: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/christmas
All episodes of the Resilient Retail Game Plan: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Parts one and two of this series: episode 316, Christmas Retail Strategy: Why August Decides December, and episode 317, Retail Cash Flow at Christmas: Four Ways to Ease the Squeeze.
Episode 309 with Hannah Bartlett on Christmas trends: https://thechristmasinsider.com/
Find out more about Stock Doctor: https://stockdoctor.net
Say hello on Instagram: @resilientretailclub
Mentioned in this episode:
Capify

Your sales aren't bad. So why does it suddenly feel like there is no money in the bank?
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
Every September and October I have the same conversation, and it is almost always with someone who is convinced they have done something wrong. You planned Christmas properly. You placed the orders. And now, right on cue, the invoices for all of that stock are landing while the Christmas sales that are supposed to pay for them are still months away. Your VAT, your wages and your rent carry on regardless. That is the Christmas cash flow pinch, and it turns up in the same fortnight every single year.
What I want you to understand is that this is not a mistake you made. It is the shape of a seasonal business. Retail runs on the gap between paying for stock and selling it, and Christmas stretches that gap wider than any other point in the year. It happens at the very top of the industry too. When I worked in big corporate retail we had a standing set of meetings for exactly this problem, with a name I have never forgotten, and the thing we were protecting was not the bank balance you would assume. At Paperchase we took half our year's revenue in the fourth quarter, sometimes more. You do not survive a shape like that on optimism.
So in this episode I take you through four things you can do over the next few weeks to ease the squeeze. Which stock is quietly holding your money to ransom, and how to get it out. How to build a Christmas buying budget so that every pound you spend has a job to do instead of being a hopeful just-in-case. How to reshape your delivery dates and your payment terms so the cash leaves your account later than it otherwise would. And the one thing not to do when the balance looks tight. By the end you will know exactly what to review this week, what to ask your suppliers for, and why September feeling like this is information rather than a verdict. Press play and I'll walk you through it.
CHAPTERS
00:00 The Christmas cash flow pinch (and why it isn't your fault)
05:20 Way one: free the cash trapped in old stock
07:57 Way two: buy with intention, not "just in case"
09:14 Ways three and four: flow your stock in, and don't panic
LINKS
Free Get Set for Christmas planner: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/christmas
Free cash flow planner: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/cashflow
Find out more about Stock Doctor: https://stockdoctor.net
All episodes of the Resilient Retail Game Plan: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Faire (mentioned in this episode): https://www.faire.com
Mentioned in this episode:
Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month
https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/
Capify

The retailers who have a brilliant Christmas are not the ones working hardest in December.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
It is the middle of August, and I know that for a lot of you the word "Christmas" right now produces a small internal flinch. But here is the uncomfortable thing about peak season: by the time December arrives, almost every decision that will determine how it goes has already been made. The buying, the sales plan, the staffing, the storage, the marketing calendar. Every one of those is a retail management decision, and every one of them gets made weeks or months earlier, usually in a rush and usually on instinct. The effort you pour in during December is real, but it is spent inside a retail strategy you built in August whether you meant to or not.
In this episode, the first of four I am running across the next month on getting ready for Christmas, I want to talk about where you actually start. Not with this Christmas, but with last one. There is an exercise that every large retail business I have worked in runs religiously, and that almost nobody in indie retail ever does. It takes about half an hour, it uses data you already have, and it will tell you things your memory absolutely will not, because we are all very good at quietly editing out the worst bits of the last peak season. I will walk you through the questions it should answer: which products were really carrying your Christmas, what surprised you, what you were too timid on, and which bits of your small shop marketing genuinely earned their keep and brought you repeat customers.
Then I want to talk about the two things that turn that review into a plan: choosing one clear goal for this Christmas instead of trying to fix everything at once, and being honest about whether your business can physically cope with the Christmas you are hoping for. That second one matters most if you are scaling a retail business, because retail business growth is wonderful right up until the week you cannot fulfil it. Demand you cannot fill is expensive and stressful, and it is far easier to see coming in August than in the last week of November.
By the end of this episode you will know exactly what to sit down with, what to look for, and what to have decided before the next one, where we get into the cash flow to fund it all. Press play, then go and grab the free planner.
CHAPTERS
00:00 Why a great Christmas is decided in August
01:12 The Lessons Learned exercise big retailers never skip
05:37 Choosing your one Christmas goal
07:18 Capacity planning: can your business actually cope?
LINKS
Get Set for Christmas planner (free): https://www.resilientretailclub.com/christmas
All episodes: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
Mentioned in this episode:
Capify
Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month
https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/

One of my clients finished the month with sales down 23% on the year — and profit up 22% in that very same month.
Hi, I'm retail strategist and founder of Resilient Retail Club, Catherine Erdly.
There's an old business adage I wheel out more often than I probably should: turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is reality. Most of us know the phrase. Far fewer of us have ever been shown what it actually looks like inside a real independent retail business, month by month.
That gap matters, because almost everything we are taught to celebrate — a big sales month, a record week, e-commerce growth — sits squarely on the vanity side of that sentence.
In this episode I dig into what a healthy-looking top line can quietly hide. How much are you actually paying for those sales? What did the stock behind them cost, and what are you still sitting on unsold?
I share the story of a retailer whose online sales grew enormously and who became less profitable as a result, and another whose order numbers fell while the business underneath got noticeably healthier. If you have ever had a month that looked wonderful on paper and felt awful in the bank, you already know the gap I am describing.
I also get into the part almost nobody looks at until it starts to hurt: the cash locked up in your stockroom, and the one number that tells you whether your stock is working for you or quietly working against you.
By the end of this episode you will know exactly which three numbers to check every single month, why the margin you set on the way in and the margin you actually achieve on the way out are two completely different things, and what it really takes to finish a year holding less stock and more money.
Press play to hear how.
CHAPTERS
00:10 Sales down 23%, profit up 22% — the month that shouldn't add up
02:18 What a big top line quietly hides
06:39 In margin vs out margin — where the profit actually came from
15:13 Cash is reality — the client now holding £900,000 less stock
LINKS
Find out more about Stock Doctor and apply: https://stockdoctor.net
Connect with Catherine on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/catherineerdly
All episodes of the Resilient Retail Game Plan: https://www.resilientretailclub.com/podcast/
Catherine's book, Tame Your Tiger: How to Stop Your Product Business Eating You Alive
Mentioned in this episode:
Home and Gift Association is our sponsor this month
https://www.homeandgiftassociation.org.uk/
Capify