Q4 Starts Eight Months Earlier, Not in October

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Piotr Skobało and Adam Sobolewski discuss how to prepare logistics for the fourth quarter and the biggest sales spike of the year. They share experience from retail organizations selling through both e-commerce and physical stores.

WHEN TO START DEPENDS ON YOUR TOTAL LEAD TIME

The starting point is calculating total lead time — not just delivery time from the supplier's warehouse, but the entire time needed to manufacture or source the product. A practical rule: add a 10-20% buffer on top of the sum of production and distribution time. With 3 months of production and 1.5 months of distribution from Asia, planning has to start 5-8 months before the sales peak — not the moment the season starts approaching.

A FALSE SENSE OF FLEXIBILITY

Growing companies often mistakenly assume that since a supplier has a short lead time (e.g. 5-7 days in some cosmetics or appliance categories), they can react on the fly. The real question isn't "can we operationally pull in stock within a week," it's "will the manufacturer even have that stock on hand at all" — because without reserving production capacity with the supplier ahead of time, a short lead time is useless.

CHAIN DEPTH DIFFERS DRAMATICALLY BY INDUSTRY

In automotive, the supplier structure runs through several levels (tier 1, tier 2, tier 3), where a critical component is sometimes planned a year and a half in advance. In processor and electronics manufacturing, companies like Intel analyze the availability of rare materials down to tier 8-9. The key takeaway: you need to know not just your direct suppliers, but their suppliers too — the deeper your knowledge of the chain structure, the less planning relies on chance.

THE SUPPLY PLAN NEEDS THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION WORKING TOGETHER

Managing Q4 inventory can't be left solely to logistics or solely to sales — both extremes end in heated arguments in the middle of peak season ("why don't we have this product"). A real example of a mistake: several hundred thousand units of small products scheduled to ship in a single week nearly stalled the entire operation, because the plan didn't account for logistics capacity constraints. An effective supply plan is a multi-layered process involving the board, product categories, purchasing, and finance, accounting for capital commitment, warehouse space, and shelf space at points of sale.

SCENARIO DECISIONS MADE AHEAD OF TIME

A proven practice from large e-commerce: rules for reacting to sales deviating from plan (e.g. automatically reducing discounts when a category sells faster than planned, and increasing them when it sells slower) are set in advance, before peak season starts — because during the peak itself there may not be time for a considered reaction to every individual case.

SHARING FORECASTS WITH CARRIERS

Even large carriers with seemingly "unlimited" capacity actually prioritize their most important clients during peak season — a company that doesn't share its volume forecast ahead of time risks being treated as lower priority at a critical moment. The practical rule: update forecasts regularly and plan jointly with carriers, instead of calling for a rescue 5-12 hours before you need one.

EQUIPMENT AND PEOPLE IN THE WAREHOUSE NEED THEIR OWN SCHEDULE

Critical equipment (e.g. system forklifts, automation) has its own repair and replacement lead time, different from simple equipment you can rent on short notice — spare parts for automation (conveyors, sorters) should be stocked in advance, so that one failed roller doesn't stop the whole warehouse. On the people side: forecasting the staffing you'll need, attendance bonuses for the busiest December days, and awareness that some employees take sick leave precisely on the days of peak workload.

LOGISTICS AS THE LEADER OF THE PREPARATION PROCESS

Although preparing for the season looks like a sales process, it's the supply chain that has the best knowledge of the real operational constraints — and it should lead the conversation about how the organization will get through peak season, giving the rest of the company a sense of control, even if that means communicating hard constraints ahead of time.