Retailers: Black Friday Order Deadlines
By The Velocity Wear Team
Black Friday stock needs to be in the building at least two weeks before the promotion, which puts the order in late September or the first half of October. The production window is 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, transit follows it, and approval sits in front. Arriving the week of the promotion is the same as arriving late.
When does promotional stock have to be ordered?
Count back from the promotion start, not the weekend itself. Most shops now run the offer across a full week, and stock has to be counted in, priced and merchandised before it opens. Allow two weeks in hand for that, then transit, then three calendar weeks for the build, then approval. The order goes in around eight weeks ahead.
That feels early for a one-week event, and it is the reason so many promotions run on whatever happened to be in the stockroom. The wholesale range shows what can be produced to the published window, and the samples page covers the stage that has to happen before it.
How deep should a promotional run be?
Deep enough that selling out early would be a genuine win rather than a disappointment. There is no restock inside the window, so the run you place is the run you sell. Work from what the same product does in a normal week, multiply for the traffic uplift you actually expect, and buy against that rather than against the best week you have ever had.
Depth also buys a better figure. The bands start at 50 to 99 and run to 1,000 plus, so a promotional run that crosses into a higher tier improves the margin on every piece. That matters more than usual here, because the selling price is discounted by definition.
What happens if it sells through on day one?
You take the pre-orders and you fulfil them in December, because a fresh run is 10 to 15 working days from approval plus transit. That is a legitimate outcome rather than a failure, but it needs to be planned rather than improvised at the till. Decide before the promotion opens whether you will sell beyond the stock on hand and say so on the listing.
The alternative is holding a second design in reserve, produced in the same run and released when the first clears. Setting up a reorder schedule covers how to structure that so the second wave is already in the building.
What derails a promotional timeline?
Late artwork, almost always. A promotional design gets signed off by more people than a core product because the pricing and the campaign are attached to it, and every extra approver adds days. Fix the artwork deadline a fortnight before the order deadline and treat the gap as untouchable. Understanding lead times and what delays an order lists what else resets the clock.
Is promotional stock worth its own design?
Only if the design is the reason people turn up. An exclusive piece available for one week gives shoppers something the discount alone does not, and it cannot be compared on price against anything else you sell. That is a real argument for a dedicated run of 50 or more.
The counter-argument is leftovers. An exclusive that does not clear is stock you cannot sell at full price afterwards without undermining the exclusivity you just promised. Most shops resolve this by making the promotional element the bundle or the packaging rather than the garment, so unsold pieces return to the normal range on the Monday.
Whichever way you go, order it as one production run with anything else you need that month. Combining the promotional pieces with a core restock lifts the total into a better band and arrives as a single delivery, which is one set of paperwork and one goods-in job at the point of the year when the stockroom is least able to absorb two.
