The holiday rush may still be weeks away, but retailers are in full holiday hustle mode. Fittingly, that theme was front and center at Retail Brew’s in-person gathering in July.
“Rewiring Retail: Mastering Data, Inventory, and the Online Customer Experience” in New York City saw top retail executives bring their A-game with hot takes for the upcoming holiday season. Here are some of the top takeaways from our chats with some of the best speakers in the business.
Sticking to core SKUs
Dibs Beauty CEO Jeff Lee remarked that while shoppers are still spending, the consumer is reeling under pressure.
According to Maggie Barnett, COO of ShipHero, brands are going to invest toward their mainline essentials this holiday season. “We’re going to have a lot of products, but again, it’s going to be a limited run,” Barnett told Retail Brew. “We’re going to stick to core SKUs. There’s not going to be a lot of the outlier SKUs.”
Keeping costs down: ‘It’s not about UPS, FedEx, DHL anymore.’
Barnett said we’re not going to see “fully stocked shelves” this time around as inventory for Q4 is running light.
“We’re trying to get folks to get their inventory [in] early, but people are waiting till the last minute,” Barnett said. Retailers don’t want to gamble on experimental products that might just sit on shelves in January.
Barnett also flagged the growing role of regional carriers, as brands zero in on cost cutting with surgical precision: “We’re going to see a lot of regional carriers. I know that’s more to do with the last mile versus actually in-store retail. However, we’re going to see the regional carriers. It’s just not about UPS, FedEx, DHL anymore.”
Oura puts a ring on global distribution
Meanwhile, for health tracker ring company Oura’s VP of Global Retail Jeremiah Linder, this holiday season will be like none other as Oura sets up overseas channels to sell across parts of Europe and Australia for the first time.
“Every year, our holiday season is a new opportunity for growth,” Linder said. “We’ve also got totally different distribution versus last year in holiday.”
“That means we’re planning for businesses that this is our first holiday in Germany retail, our first holiday in Australia retail. We’ve got to get really tight with our planning now. We’ve already got inventory being built to get us ready for that holiday season,” Linder said.
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Pointing to consumer sentiment, Linder struck an optimistic tone: “We expect that consumers will be a little bit more deal seeking, waiting for that period of Black Friday–Cyber Monday and into December to really commit their dollars, given some of the macroenvironment of tariffs, inflation.”
Collaboration is key to inventory forecasting this holiday season
For months, brands have wrestled with how much inventory is really enough for the holidays.
Linder said Oura relies on its retail partners to develop a “collaborative” inventory forecast. “I think that’s important so that if we miss we know that we missed together—whether that’s overshooting forecast or under shooting,” he added. “But by collaborating, we can get a sense of what their expectations are for holiday, what our expectations are, and then we can meet in the middle.”
Spice supplier Burlap & Barrel’s Co-CEO and Co-founder Ori Zohar agreed, saying that being a “good partner” always pays off.
“We are a really good partner to our partner farmers,” Zohar said. “We pay them more, we pay on time, we pay ahead of schedule. And so we’ve been really building this trusted relationship where we have this first right to the best quality that they have. Because of that, we feel like we’re in a really good position where we have exactly the inventory we need, and we’re really set up to keep growing through holidays this year.”
Overall, Zohar said brands are feeling a sense of turmoil ahead of the holidays.
“With all the political news and global news, we know that there’s a lot of displacement happening,” Zohar said. “We’re [a] more nimble company—it’s able to bob, and weave, and pivot, and figure out how to show up in the market. We’re working really hard to be ready, be on the balls of our toes to be able to react to whatever comes down our way.”