If you’ve been in ecommerce for a while, you know Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) represent the biggest revenue opportunity of the year. As orders spike, you may also realize the pressure on your fulfillment operations scales just as fast. It quickly leads to delayed shipments, oversold inventory, and backlogged returns if your supply chain lacks structure.
To avoid congestion in your warehouse, a brand owner or manager should audit their fulfilment capabilities well ahead of the event. Here is your guide to the four critical operational areas you need to prepare first.
1. Balance Stock Levels Across High-Demand SKUs
Accurate inventory management forms the foundation of peak season preparation. Done right, it can prevent costly stockouts on top-selling categories and avoid excess inventory post-sale.
Before you start managing the inventory, review historical sales data from previous promotional periods before BFCM alongside your current growth trajectory. Then, identify your primary SKUs and establish buffer stock levels to handle unexpected demand surges. As you go, run the following steps:
- Audit physical stock early. Conduct a full stock count to reconcile physical warehouse levels with your online store platform, or if your store is connected to a 3PL integration, you can compare counts with their WMS.
- Set up layout for best-selling SKUs. A well-planned layout reduces travel time to pick items. Organize your warehouse layout, so fast-moving items sit near packing stations.
- Establish reorder cut-offs. Account for longer supplier lead times during Q4 to ensure inventory arrives at your fulfilment location before sales start.
2. Manage Collection Windows and Cut-Off Dates
Shipping networks face massive parcel volumes during busy trade. Making clear communication regularly with your freight carriers is key to delivering on schedule and keeping delivery estimates realistic. Keep in mind that a delay affects your customer satisfaction. Avoid it by paying attention to these aspects:
- Confirm pickup schedules. Agree on daily collection times and extra freight capacity to handle increase in parcel volumes.
- Publish order cut-off dates. Announce a shipping deadline on your website header and footer, and display it again on checkout pages so shoppers know when to order for pre-holiday delivery.
- Vary shipping options. Maintain relationships with secondary local courier networks to handle localized overflow or regional express deliveries. If you’re not sure why you should vary your options, read how to prepare your freight management for peak season delays.
3. Optimise Floor Layout and Prepare Staff
Black Friday typically triggers a surge in order volume. Here are some ways you can optimise your fulfilment workflows:
- Group orders. Group product combinations together and establish one-way picking routes to prevent congestion in warehouse aisles. A few ways to organise group orders include: customer priority (prioritises repeat shoppers), shipping priority (customers who pay for express shipping get their orders first), and product type.
- Get additional hands. Whether you fulfill in-house or through a third-party logistics, secure additional warehouse support early so you can train them on your SOP, such as: how to select the most appropriate packaging.
- Supply your packing station. Ensure packing areas have adequate packing supplies, such as cartons, void fill, and shipping labels to avoid downtime during busy shifts. If you use custom packaging, confirm your stock of boxes and inserts early since reordering them takes longer lead time. Here’s how custom and standard packaging differ.
4. Plan for Post-Sale Return Wave
Returns naturally spike in the weeks after BFCM, and it requires dedicated systems to get resellable stock back live fast. However, processing returns in the same space as outbound picking risks clutter and shipping errors. Plan these with your team to run the process more smoothly:
- A receiving zone. Allocate an area within the warehouse specifically for opening, inspecting, and grading returned items.
- Returned items categories. Create clear guidelines for your team to categorise items into immediate restock, repackaging needed, or damaged items.
- Return requests automation. Use digital self-service return portals to reduce customer service tickets volume and let them generate return shipping labels automatically.
Get Ready for Black Friday: Which Areas to Fix First?
Preparing your ecommerce fulfilment before Black Friday helps your business capitalize on peak sales opportunities without compromising customer experience. You may not have time to fix everything at once before the sale. A useful way to prioritise is to ask: which area takes the longest to change, and which is hardest to recover once the sale is live?
Based on that, start with stock, since supplier lead times are the least flexible and a stockout or oversell can’t be fixed mid-sale. Move to carriers and cutoffs next because collection capacity is shared with every other brand and your cutoffs are a promise to customers. Then, adjust your labour and floor setup as they’re more accurate once your stock and shipping plans are settled. Returns come last, but don’t be too late before the first returns land.
Your own situation may change this order. A fashion brand, for example, may want to start on returns earlier. If you’re still unsure where to begin, identify which area you could least afford to get wrong in the middle of the sale, and start there.