The Holidays Start Sooner Than You Think: Small Steps, Calmer Season

Back to school season is wrapping up, and for retailers, that usually means a short window to catch your breath before the next big push…the holidays. This year, that push is a big one. Deloitte is forecasting $1.70 to $1.71 trillion in holiday retail sales this season, growth of 4 to 4.8 percent over last year, with online sales growing even faster at 7.5 to 8.4 percent. 

And it starts earlier than a lot of people expect. NRF’s most recent holiday survey found that 42% of shoppers are already browsing and buying before November, while 63% now say they do the bulk of their shopping over Thanksgiving weekend alone, up from 59% the year before. If a good chunk of your customers are already thinking about the holidays, this is the right time for you to be thinking about them too. 

It’s a Season, Not a Single Day 

Here’s the thing about ​“the holidays”…it’s not one date on the calendar…it’s a stretch of weeks where different customers are celebrating different things at different times. Diwali often falls in October or November. Thanksgiving isn’t even on the same day everywhere, Canada celebrates in mid-October, while it’s late November for the United States. Hanukkah’s timing shifts every year depending on the lunar calendar. Then there’s Black Friday, Christmas, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa, and New Year’s, all rolling through in close succession. 

For a retailer, that means ​“holiday season” really spans a good couple of months, with different peaks, different shoppers, and different reasons to walk through your door. Thinking about it as one long season, rather than a single Christmas rush, tends to lead to better planning and a shopping experience that feels welcoming to everyone who walks in, whatever they’re celebrating (or if they’re just there for the sales). 

A Few Low Effort Ways to Get a Head Start

You don’t need a full strategic overhaul this week. A few small, easy moves now can save you a lot of stress later. 

Take a quick look back before you look forward. You don’t need a deep dive into spreadsheets. Just a gut check: what worked well last year, what caught you off guard, and what would you do differently? A ten-minute trip down memory lane now beats trying to remember it all in the middle of a busy December. 

Start the people conversation early. Time off requests, extra shifts, who’s around for the busiest days, these conversations get harder the closer you get to the season. Bringing it up with your team now, even casually, gives everyone more breathing room to plan. 

Give your customer experience a once-over. Walk through your store (and your website) with fresh eyes. Are your hours posted and accurate? Does your messaging feel current? Is there anything that quietly needs freshening up before more traffic starts coming through? 

Get ahead of this year’s hot items. Electronics remain one of the most requested gift categories (22% of shoppers, per NRF), and popular models tend to move fast, so lead times and backorders can sneak up on you. Smart rings are one to watch this year. Oura alone sold about 3.6 million rings in the 12 months ending this June, roughly double what the entire category shipped in 2024, and they’ve quickly become a go-to gift for anyone into fitness or sleep tracking. If they’re not in your lineup yet, now’s a good time to ask what’s available. 

Take the guesswork out of restocking. Keeping shelves full through the holidays is a lot of work when you’re doing it by hand. With vendor managed inventory (VMI), your vendor uses your actual sales and inventory data to forecast demand and send restock orders for each location, so best sellers stay on the shelf, and slow movers don’t pile up. You still review and approve every order, you just skip the busy work. iQmetrix works with a range of VMI partners, so getting set up could be easier than you think. 

Give your return policy a second look. Between gift exchanges and the general chaos of the season, returns tend to spike, and a policy that’s unclear or hard to find is a fast way to frustrate a customer who was otherwise happy. Make sure it’s easy to understand, easy to find, and actually reflects how you want to handle a busy season.

Sketch out a loose promotional calendar. You don’t need finished campaigns yet, just a rough sense of when you might want to run a sale, send an email, or push a social post, and around which dates. Having even a loose outline now means you’re not scrambling to figure out messaging the same week you need to send it. 

Think about the small touches that make shopping easier. Things like gift wrapping, gift cards, extended hours, or a clearly marked ​“gifts under $50” table don’t take much to set up, but they can make a real difference to someone who’s shopping under a bit of time pressure and just wants the decision made easier for them. 

Take stock of your gift card program. Gift cards remain the single most requested gift, half of shoppers say it’s what they actually want (per NRF). Worth a quick check that yours are stocked, easy to find near the counter, and simple for staff to redeem without a second thought. 

Make sure your checkout can keep up. Tap, mobile wallets, split payments, gift card redemption, and Buy Now Pay Later are quickly becoming the norm, not the exception. 43% of shoppers now say a Buy Now Pay Later plan will play a role in their holiday spending this year, up from just 20% two years ago (per Experian). Not offering it is a real way to lose a bigger sale to a customer who walks away to ​“think about it.” iQ Pay makes this an easy box to check, with Klarna and Affirm BNPL built right in, so retailers already running it don’t need to bolt on a separate integration to catch this trend. 

Watch for burnout, not just headcount. Enough people scheduled doesn’t always mean the team feels supported. A demanding stretch like this one goes a lot smoother when breaks are protected and the schedule feels fair, not just full. 

Small Steps Now, Calmer Season Later

The retailers who feel the most in control come November and December usually aren’t the ones who did more, they’re the ones who started a little earlier. Shoppers are on track to spend close to $890 per person this season, the second-highest amount on record, so the volume moving through stores over the next few months is real. With a good chunk of shoppers already gearing up, it’s a good time to start thinking about what your holiday season actually looks like, and giving yourself a head start while you can. 

Of course, getting a head start is a lot easier when your systems are already working together behind the scenes: inventory, POS, and fulfillment talking to each other in real time instead of you piecing it together by hand during your busiest weeks. That’s the idea behind iQmetrix’s Intelligent Commerce approach, one connected system that handles the details so you’re not stuck reconciling five different tools when it counts most.