Retail Analysis
NAVIGATING THE GOLDEN QUARTER: RETAIL’S ANNUAL PRESSURE POT
Retail Express’ Ed Betts explores the reasons the golden quarter is so difficult for retailers, and explains how AI-driven retailing can drive strategic and tactical benefits which lead to bigger profits.
T
he Golden Quarter is a pressure pot when it comes to planning. The 100-day countdown to Christmas encompasses
the majority of the year’s key fixed seasonal events, and also squeezes together retail’s most profitable period with its most critical planning window. The Golden Quarter demands that retailers not only take every measure to trade out of the year cleanly, but also that they ratify their strategy for the year ahead. This period is monumentally difficult, and it
is increasingly easy to argue that the Golden Quarter is more challenge than opportunity. The past two years have seen late-year trading happen under a veil of financial uncertainty, with increased costs pressing down on suppliers, retailers, and customers alike. There has been no great reversal of financial fortunes in the past year and the new government’s ‘tough decisions’ mean trade during 2024’s Golden Quarter will certainly not be characterised by a spending free-for-all.
6 | November/December 2024 Retailers will be challenged at every turn
to meet their customers’ needs and expectations while maintaining their own bottom line. Forward planning is critical. Joint business planning, in most cases, must be arranged with suppliers, margins negotiated, and the dotted line signed by the start of the next financial year.
Strategy versus tactics Squeezed, as they are, by the vast amount of pressure the Golden Quarter brings, retailers must be keenly cognisant of the relationship between strategy and tactics. Even with a winning strategy, there are forces that retailers cannot control. It doesn’t matter if a retailer has rolled into the Golden Quarter fully prepared: volatility is a fact of life.
Supply and inventory hiccups must be dealt with tactically.
Tweaks must be made to future planning which has, in the course of business, not quite hit the mark. If a retailer is outplayed,
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