4
min read

Black Friday and Beyond: Building Effective Operations Beyond Peak Season

Written by
Dropit Team
Published on
November 25, 2025
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A new year is coming. For the average person, New Year’s Eve marks a time for reflection, goal setting, and the start of resolutions to guide personal growth. But once the fireworks have died down, the prospect of making those declarations a reality sets in. Resolutions are ideas, but real success comes not from goals but from maintaining the discipline to pursue them consistently through the year. 

For retailers, Black Friday is an explosion of revenue. While seamless operations and precise inventory management drive those peak sales, long-term success is about maintaining the discipline to pursue effective strategies consistently throughout the year — not just in the lead up to the holidays. 

By Q3, the door has already closed on preparations for this year’s peak season. But it is an opportune time to start thinking about Q4 2026, by first understanding the root challenges of the season and considering the best ways to approach them.

Preparing for Peak Season 2026

For peak season success, retailers must ensure their inventory process creates a seamless experience for all their customers (in-store and online). Avoiding stockouts is crucial, which requires accurate and precise demand forecasting. Unless retailers can make effective inventory decisions by analyzing past sales data and trends and accounting for shifting consumer demand, they could miss out on significant sales opportunities. What’s more, they must have efficient supply chain logistics to carry out the plan, as inefficient inventory rebalancing can lead to delays and stockouts.

If retailers can become more proactive, sharpen their decision-making, and improve their agility, they are in a position to improve revenue.

In addition to stockouts causing potential customers to turn to competitors, another source of friction can come from a lack of cohesive visibility and flexibility across all sales channels. Consumers often expect the same products available in stores to be available online. If the two systems are disconnected, or even if there is a lack of inventory transparency, they might turn elsewhere. 

The two main challenges are avoiding stockouts and ensuring unified inventory visibility. An effective approach must be one that works all year. Retailers need a solution that delivers valuable insights well beyond November and December. The stakes may seem highest during the holiday rush, but in reality, they’re high all year. 

3 Ways Dropit Helps Businesses Build Effective Inventory Management Strategies

Effective inventory management requires balancing inventory to meet demand without overburdening resources. It’s about using past and present sales data, forecasting accurately, and staying adaptable. 

The fact is, retailers can’t fully grasp their data if some or all systems are disconnected. When the ERP, OMS, IMS, POS, and other systems are siloed, retailers cannot expect to have an accurate foundation for their decision-making. These systems also update at varying frequencies, which means there is no structure, synchronization, or standardization. Even if these systems are connected, they must be on the same page for the data to be usable and valuable. 

Dropit’s first step is to unify the retailer’s data by creating a data lake from all existing systems. Before using Dropit, many retail executives struggled to gain a comprehensive, real-time understanding of their inventory across their entire ecosystem. With Dropit, retailers get an accurate, live inventory snapshot at all times. With the data lake in place, can we apply advanced machine models that take the data and continuously solve for optimized inventory decisions, learning and improving over time.

This gives retailers better inventory decisions on three fronts:

1. Unified Inventory Visibility

Unified inventory visibility is the foundation for allocation, restocking, and return decisions that avoid stockouts and overstock. This visibility helps retailers better serve their customers with speed and efficiency, avoiding supply chain inefficiencies to get items where they need to be faster.

2. Machine Models for Demand Forecasting

With machine learning models and advanced analytics, retailers can take a precise approach to demand forecasting and market segmentation. They can keep high-demand items available when demand peaks and minimize excess at the end of the season.

3. Micro-Level Insights for Continuous Improvements

Dropit’s detail-driven, micro-level approach enables retailers to make small, impactful adjustments that continuously improve inventory decisions over time. Amid shifting trends, they can discover ways to reduce operational costs and avoid markdowns.

Plan for Long-Term Success with Dropit

Effective strategies — just like resolutions set on January 1 — must be prioritized in the off-season for real change to happen. Retailers realizing the need for better inventory decision-making can get started now to be in the best position for the next holiday season. 

Learn more about how our micro-decision approach helps retailers achieve inventory optimization — for Black Friday, peak season, and any time of year. Contact Dropit today.

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