It’s October, and you can already see many retailers are adorning their shop fronts with Christmas paraphernalia and starting to adding Christmas stock such as Christmas trees and decorations. However, many leave the preparations too late.
Although the economy is not doing well now this year, the signs do appear to show this will be a good Christmas, retail sales are up, interest in Christmas is up from last year, which was up from the year before and the public mood seems positive.
Measured interest using Data Source: Google Trends (www.google.com/trends)."
One of the points I have noticed and this graph show that the selling season for Christmas is in recent years getting longer. It is now from mid-December to late January. So we are talking about 6-7 weeks.
Among the million and one jobs, you will need to do now is to plan your stock ordering, so you need to estimate your stock requirements something our point of sale can help you with. You also need to look into your staff levels again something our point of sale can help you with all this; I be talking about these soon.
Right now, there is something else that you need to check is all your equipment work? The odds are its going to get much busier. Many of you are now planning to bring in some of the old POS machines “out of the closet” to accommodate the rush period. Have you tested it to make sure it works? Some of it have not been used in almost a year, a lot can happen in a year even if its just in the shelf. Have you checked that you have all the cables? Do you have a connection into your network where you need it? Can this equipment link into your system? Does it all work if you plug it in? I suggest you try it now.
What is going to happen if you have extra staff and the computer register does not work? I have seen this happen all to often.
It is wise to test this now in advance to ensure they’re running properly.
The closer it gets to Christmas, the harder it gets to repair in time.
Preparing for the Christmas holidays is a fun time, but you need to use these next two months wisely to put your best face on your store.
