A festival week is the best trading a shop does all year and the point at which the most things go wrong at once. The reason is that three separate pressures land in the same fortnight: you have to hold more stock than usual, serve more people than usual, and decide about more credit than usual — all at the speed of a queue.
Before: order against last year, not against hope
The most useful thing a year of records gives you is a specific answer to "how much of this did I actually sell last festival". Not a general sense that it was busy — a product-wise number. That number is a far better basis for an order than the supplier's enthusiasm or your memory of a good week.
- Pull last year's sales for the same fortnight, product by product.
- Separate the things that sold out early from the things you were still carrying in December. The first group is where to be brave.
- Order the second group flat, or less. It did not sell last year and the festival will not change that.
- If this is your first year with records, the job now is simply to have them next year. That alone makes next festival's order a different exercise.
During: the credit decisions come faster than usual
During an ordinary week you make a handful of credit decisions and each gets a moment's thought. During a festival you make dozens, with people waiting, in an atmosphere where refusing feels ungenerous. This is exactly the situation that produces balances nobody intended.
The defence is not to be stricter. It is to have decided beforehand, so that during the rush you are applying a rule rather than making a judgement. Limits set on customer records, and a period attached to each, mean the answer at the counter is already known.
After: the two jobs of the following fortnight
- 1
Count what is left, within the first few days
Festival stock has a short window in which it is still worth full price. Knowing on day three what you are carrying gives you the option of discounting to clear it. Knowing on day thirty does not.
- 2
Start collecting while the purchase is recent
A reminder a fortnight after a festival purchase lands very differently from one two months later. The customer still remembers buying it, and the amount still feels connected to something real.
- 3
Compare the two numbers honestly
Total sales for the fortnight, and total cash actually received. The gap between them is what went out on credit, and it is the number that tells you whether this was a good festival or only a busy one.
- 4
Write down what you learned, for next year
What sold out, what did not move, which customers took credit and did not clear it. This takes twenty minutes and it is the entire basis of next year's order.
A record sales week and a record cash week are two different weeks, and sometimes the second one never arrives.