A 30-Minute Pre-Check to Prepare your Store for the Holidays

By Bob Phibbs

Updated November 21, 2024

At this time of year, there are many holiday preparation articles about how brick-and-mortar retailers can have a profitable holiday shopping season. I've seen everything from slashing prices with flash sales to "maximizing employee efficiencies," which sounds like you expect your employees to do more with less, which translates into I quit and high turnover.

You need well-trained employees to limit markdowns, increase conversions, and delight your loyal customers with a warm and inviting shopping experience that will ultimately encourage them to spend more in your store.

But it's easy to lose track of what you can do now to prepare for a great holiday season and increase your sales by getting the maximum amount of inventory sold in the last six weeks of the year.

While marketing campaigns will emphasize how you can help your shoppers celebrate the holidays, marketing or social media are only some areas to consider. Having done business makeovers for hundreds of retail businesses, it's a good idea to start to look at your store from the customer's viewpoint:

What gets in their way?
What makes their shopping easier?
What takes away from their shopping experience?

All three ways to prepare your store for the holidays revolve around three basic categories: Look, Do, and Review.

Look

Go to each corner of your store and sit down. Yes, sit down.
Look up at the lighting to see if any bulbs are out. Replace immediately.
Look under your racks for dust elephants, hangars, and trash. Clean immediately.
Look down your aisles. Is there adequate room for strollers and wheelchairs? Measure if you must to maintain a minimum of 42”. Adjust accordingly.
Look at your walls. Is your focus more on shelving units, slatwall, and hooks at the expense of merchandise? If so, fill shelves and hooks with product.

Go into your back room. Take notice of everything back there: all of the products (whether on shelves or in boxes), display units, shelving units...everything- not just your inventory. What will you be using in the next 60 days? What won't be needed? Throw out, take home, or find somewhere else to put anything not being used in the next 60 days.
Make your next 8-week employee schedule. Know the shifts you must cover only at a minimum and your busy times like weekends, special sale times, and the week before Christmas when consumers are in a rush. You get the idea. Staff with more associates than you may think you need; you staff for the rush, not for the convenience of employees. Take into account any holiday travel they might be taking and delays that could happen.
If you have security alarms on items such as leather garments or electronics, put in fresh batteries and ensure there are adequate keys to unlock these high-theft products.
If you have a security camera(s), ensure the backup works properly and focuses on the right inventory.
Drive by your store at night. What lights are left on in the store? What lights must be replaced in your parking lot, channel letters, or windows? It's a good idea to replace them now as it is dark early again.

Review

Have a new employee go behind your counter, then ask them the following questions:
- What do you do if the POS goes down while a customer is at the register? If they don't know, teach them and the rest of your crew.
- What would you do if you need a bag right now and are out? If they don't know, teach them.
- How do you know when we need to restock the register tape, bags, boxes, and gift cards? Make a rule for the newbies to monitor such things so your higher-value employees don't have to do it during a rush.
- Where would you find their number if you had to reach the owner or manager? When something happens, it is easy to panic, so teach them what type of situations they might need help in. And that goes from a customer complaining about a bad shopping experience to something blowing up on Facebook, Threads, or your other social media.

Review your mall or center hours. If you are an independent, get together with other local retailers on your street and make and post your own, starting with Black Friday.

In Sum

Deloitte predicts that holiday retail sales will likely increase between 2.3% and 3.3% in 2024. The winners with brick-and-mortar stores will be the ones who devised a plan and executed it.

The losers will let their customers walk out the door empty-handed, and those sales that should have been theirs go to an online retailer.

Use this 30-minute checkup to start to get some of the basics out of the way, then encourage your employees to help you come up with another 30-minute list you can easily accomplish in a day so you can have a great holiday season, one that is joyous and focused on the happiness of your customers.

That second list would include your marketing strategy, a promotions plan, online marketing campaigns, scheduling your social media holiday promotions and messages and LIVE videos, shipping of gifts, and additional training for your sales associates.

Once traffic picks up, you'll be glad you dedicated time to prepare. While you can never have a perfect plan, you can limit things that stop you from enjoying the shopping season and surviving working holiday retail.