Overstocked, Underprepared: The Hidden BFCM Mistake You Can’t Afford

Hey there,

Let me tell you something that rarely makes the highlight reel after BFCM:

It’s not always the stockouts that kill your margins.
It’s the inventory you didn’t sell.

A few years ago, I worked with a brand that crushed Black Friday in terms of traffic—their ads were working, influencers posting, and cart sizes rising.

But by December, their warehouse looked like a graveyard of what-could-have-beens.

$46,000 worth of unsold stock.
$3,500/month in extra 3PL fees.
A 19% dip in gross margin for Q4.

No one talks about this because it’s not as exciting as a “sold-out in 48 hours” headline.
But if you’re building a DTC brand for the long game, this is the kind of mistake that quietly breaks your business.

🎯 The Real Goal of Inventory Planning for BFCM

It’s not to “never run out.”
It’s not to “make sure we have enough.”
It’s to predict the minimum stock you need to capture 90–95% of demand without burying yourself in leftovers.

That’s it.

Because every extra unit you don’t sell on Black Friday becomes harder to move every day after.

• It eats storage space.

• It delays your next product launch.

• It ruins your cash flow for Q1.

💸 The DTC Equation Most Founders Miss

Here’s a hard truth:

Profitability is killed faster by overstock than by missed sales.

Let’s do some quick math:

• You order 3,000 units at $10 landed cost = $30,000

• You sell 2,100 units during BFCM = $21,000 cost sold

• 900 units left = $9,000 stuck in inventory

That $9K sits in your warehouse, costing you another $0.80–$1.20 per unit per month in storage.
Within 90 days, you’ve spent another $2,000+ just holding it.

Now, slash prices to clear stock.
Margins drop.
Brand perception suffers.
And you’re stuck explaining why Q1 looks like a loss.

🚨 The 3 Things You Need to Get Right Now

1. Align Your Forecast to Marketing Capacity

   Most BFCM forecasts are built in isolation. The ops team makes a guess. The marketing team launches ads. The two collide.
   
   ✅ Fix: Build your demand forecast based on actual ad spend, historical ROAS, conversion rates, and traffic projections.
   

2. Set a Sell-Through Target (Not Just a Sales Target)
   Don’t just ask, “How much can we sell?”
   Ask, “How much can we turn without carrying leftovers into Q1?”
   

   ✅ Fix: Set a sell-through target (e.g., 85–90%) and work backward. If you expect to sell 2,000 units, stock 2,200—not 3,000.
   

3. Have a Post-BFCM Plan for Inventory
   The biggest mistake is thinking the campaign ends on Cyber Monday. It doesn’t. It ends when you’ve moved the stock.
   

   ✅ Fix: Pre-plan bundles, restock alerts, and January “reset” campaigns to move BFCM leftovers at margin-friendly prices.

📌 What to Do This Week:

🔲 Sit down with your marketing lead. Align on budget, CPA targets, and forecasted traffic.
🔲 Run a low/medium/high forecast scenario. Add buffer—but not blindly.
🔲 Create a liquidation plan in advance. (Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later.)
🔲 Get your PERT timeline aligned with your stock flow—from PO to warehouse intake to Shopify sync.

If you need help building that layered forecast or figuring out your max inventory cap based on cash flow, reply “Inventory Planning” and I’ll send our planning tool and margin worksheet.

Lastly

Everyone’s focused on scaling. But real growth isn’t about revenue—it’s about turning inventory into cash without leaking margin.

Inventory doesn’t just move.
You move it—with strategy.

In Part 4, we’ll get into the final leg of the race: shipping, warehousing, and fulfillment—because the sale isn’t complete until it’s in your customer’s hands, on time.

Here’s to moving smarter,
Lara