Keeping Supply Chains Strong Amid Global Celebrations: Managing Holiday Peaks

Although each company may be impacted differently during holidays, there are a few factors that you should be mindful of when considering how to manage seasonal shipping.

Early Shoppers

Everyone knows that when it comes to a big celebration, preparation is key. With that in mind, more and more customers are starting their holiday shopping earlier than ever. This can cause a strain on your inventory levels if unaccounted for, which in turn puts pressure on vendors and other stages in your supply chain to restock your business with high-demand products quickly.

Disruptions to Vendor's Supply Chains

Your business cannot operate in isolation, and therefore you are reliant on your vendors to also maintain good supply chain management in the lead-up and throughout holiday peaks. With more workforce taking annual leave during peak holiday times, factories can close or have limited production lines, which impacts both your vendors and your logistics plans.

As well as preparing to ensure that everything in your supply chain works perfectly, when it comes to seasonal shipping success it’s also important to prepare for things to go wrong.

Plan your Shipments Early

Pre-planning your shipments as early as possible is an invaluable way to avoid global supply chain disruption. Not only does it allow your vendors time to source the products you need well in advance of shipping your cargo, but it also affords your business more time to correct and address any issues or bottlenecks within your operations before the high-pressure seasonal shipping starts.

As a retailer planning and organizing early shipments also allows you to capitalize on the business brought by early seasonal shoppers. This great for your profit margins, but also for establishing your business as a reliable source of this year’s ‘must-have’ holiday products.

Diversify your Supply Chain

Resilience is a crucial part of successfully managing holiday shipping and diversifying your supply chain is a great way to build this. To reduce your reliance on a single source or supplier, ahead of planning your seasonal shipping, it may be worth identifying reliable suppliers in different regions. This prevents your business from being impacted if one supplier has limited production lines for a certain period, or if weather conditions mean that cargo travelling by certain shipping routes will be delayed. This helps reduce your stress levels during the holiday season by making sure you have enough stock on the shelves to meet your customer’s demands.

Leverage Technology

Digitalization and technological developments are beneficial across all stages of your supply chain and can help to make the seasonal shipping process much smoother.

Tools like predictive AI software analysis or freight forecasting can help you analyse historic trends and anticipate fluctuations. This data can be used to help you build contingency plans which ensures that if delays or disruption do occur, your cargo is still able to reach your customers in time for the holidays.

Increase inventory levels

As a retailer, being able to anticipate potential levels of consumer demand ahead of the holiday season provides you with ample opportunity to increase your inventory levels ahead of the holiday season. Increasing your inventory levels for popular products (without overstocking) ahead of the peak in demand reduces the strain across your supply chain that can occur when trying to acquire high levels of cargo quickly.

It's important to not just rely on predictive tools, however. As a business you know your industry and your customers, so increasing inventory levels across as much of all your popular stock as possible is advisable.

Collaborate with Reliable Logistics Partners

Similarly, working with a reliable, experienced logistics partner is a huge advantage when it comes to avoiding operational disruption. Trusted logistics partners often have extensive networks and transportation routes, which offers your supply chain increased flexibility. As a result, in cases where delays may occur, you’ll be able to adjust your supply chain accordingly through your logistics partners.

Equally, experienced logistics partners, like MSC, also have the size to help you scale up your supply chain during peak seasons of shipping. This helps prevent bottlenecks and makes sure that your cargo arrives at its destination on time and in good condition.