Black Friday is a little over two weeks away. If you are the planner for a DTC brand, your plan was probably done a while back. The demand plan is in, inventory forecast is locked-in, the POs are placed, the 3PL knows what’s coming. Then you ask yourself.. “Are the odds in my favor”?
This is the part everybody dreads about: deciding what to do when the plan starts to slip. And this is what's common in supply chain. I'd be rather be hopeful that the odds are in my favor.
A supplier confirms a date and quietly moves it. The inbound shipment sails a week late. The warehouse count stops matching what your store shows. And the SKU you are promoting hardest starts selling faster than any scenario you modeled.
None of that means the plan was wrong. It means the plan is now meeting the real world, and you have far less time to respond than you had to prepare.
At this point, I would look beyond whether we are on plan and ask two questions: which problems will cost us the most if we leave them, and which can we still change?
Your BFCM plan needs a way to course-correct
Planning sets the direction. Course-correcting keeps you on it when conditions change. It is easy to spend months preparing the plan without agreeing on how to respond when it starts to slip.
A forecast tells you what you expect to sell. It does not tell you which of today’s problems will stop you selling what was forecasted.
Close to BFCM, the questions get specific. Will this stock last? Will the delayed shipment be sellable in time? Should we move inventory, change the offer or accept that some demand will go unserved?
Answering them takes accurate and up-to-date data, clear priorities, and someone with the authority to act.
Six inventory exceptions to check before BFCM
Start with your bestsellers, your promoted products, and the orders customers have already placed. Look for these six exceptions:
- Stockout risk: A product may sell out before replenishment becomes available to sell. Check safety stock against expected promotional demand, including sales between now and the promotion. Consider a transfer, a faster replenishment route that can still make stock available in time, or a change to the offer.
- Late inbound stock: A purchase order has slipped, or stock has arrived but is still waiting to be put away. Confirm when it will actually be available to fulfil orders. An arrival date is not enough.
- Stock in the wrong location: One warehouse is running short while another holds surplus. Check whether a transfer can arrive and be processed in time without creating a shortage at the source.
- Open orders without reliable stock coverage: Customers have already placed orders, but some have no stock allocated or depend on uncertain inbound shipments. Track these separately from future demand and flag any delivery promises at risk.
- Overstock tying up cash or space: Slow movers can lock up money and warehouse capacity you need elsewhere. Look at selective offers, markdown plans, or bundles or changes to future receipts, and be clear about the margin cost.
- Inventory counts that disagree: Your warehouse, store and marketplaces show different quantities. Investigate the affected products, count where necessary and fix the underlying records. On a promoted bestseller, a count you cannot trust undermines every other decision.
The list becomes useful when each exception names a product, a consequence and a deadline.
How to prioritize inventory exceptions when time is short
I would judge each exception with three questions:
- What happens if we do nothing? Consider KPIs at risk, commitments already made to customers and the effect on other products or locations.
- When does the useful window close? It could be a receiving appointment, a transfer departure or the last point at which marketing can change an offer.
- Which response is worth its cost? Compare the options, including freight, handling and the risk of moving the problem somewhere else.
If an uncertain count affects a promoted bestseller, verify it before paying to move or expedite stock. Where existing delivery promises are at risk, make sure those orders are covered in the response.
Say a bestseller is heading for a 200-unit shortfall over Cyber Monday. The supplier shipment will miss the receiving window, but another warehouse has stock.
A transfer looks promising. Before approving it, check that warehouse’s own demand and reservations, confirm the receiving slot at the destination and establish when those units will actually be sellable. Compare the transfer cost with the contribution you expect to preserve.
If the transfer is viable, you have a response. If it cannot arrive in time, the decision moves to the promotion: reduce its reach, send traffic to a suitable alternative or offer a preorder with a dispatch date you can support.
The hard part is recognizing when an inventory fix is no longer viable. Keep chasing it and you take time away from the marketing and customer support teams who now have to respond.
Decide who can approve changes before BFCM week
A clear recommendation can still stall because nobody knows who can approve it.
Before the event, agree who can authorize extra freight, move stock, change an offer, adjust channel allocations or pause paid spend. Set spending limits and make sure whoever covers each decision is reachable over the weekend.
Give every active exception a named owner, a next action and a time to check again.
Revisit the most exposed products regularly as sales develop. Watch available stock, incoming receipts and fulfillment backlogs together. A product can have healthy stock and still be building a queue of orders that will miss their promised ship dates.
Every review should end in a decision: act, keep watching or accept the risk.
Stay surgical, keep learning
A targeted fix addresses the immediate problem at a cost the business can justify. It also means being explicit about what you will leave alone.
Alongside the action list, keep a short record of three things:
- What we assumed: a supplier date, receiving time or stock count we treated as reliable.
- What we estimated: promotional demand, returns or how customers would respond to an alternative offer.
- What we learned: what happened, the evidence and what we will change.
An unchecked assumption needs verifying. An estimate needs a range and a checkpoint. A risk you understood and accepted may need a better contingency next time.
If receiving took four days longer than expected, build that time into the next inbound plan and also look into ways to shorten it next time. If a transfer worked, record its actual cost and timing so the team can use that option again.
Write these down while the details are fresh, including the decisions that worked. It gives the team something concrete to take into 2027 planning.
Murphy’s law will still show up next season. Even then, the impact would be from fewer unchecked assumptions and a faster response when they do.
