The 3 Silent Supply Chain Killers Before BFCM

Hey founder,

Most of the supply chain failures I’ve seen around Black Friday don’t come from obvious disasters.

It’s not always containers lost at sea or factories ghosting.
It’s the quiet misses — the little things founders assume are fine, until suddenly they’re not.

Here are 3 overlooked moves that look harmless now but could ruin your BFCM week if you don’t catch them.

1️⃣ The Warehouse Bottleneck Nobody Planned For

You know that feeling when you finally exhale because inventory landed?
Here’s the truth: landing isn’t the finish line.

One founder I worked with thought they were in the clear… until the 3PL admitted they couldn’t slot inbound until the following week.
Sales went live. Ads were running. Inventory was literally sitting at the dock.

The quiet killer: assuming your 3PL’s capacity matches your urgency.

The overlooked move: Call your 3PL today and ask for their daily inbound + pick/pack capacity during BFCM. If it doesn’t match your forecasted orders, adjust now (not on Cyber Monday).

2️⃣ The Cost Creep That Sneaks in at the Edges

Another founder celebrated when freight finally cleared port at a “reasonable” cost.
Three weeks later, finance flagged something weird: $0.50/unit higher landed cost than forecast.

Not from freight. Not from duties.
It was warehouse handling + packaging upgrades that weren’t tracked.

The quiet killer: ignoring small add-ons.
By the time you notice, margins are already gone.

The overlooked move: Audit landed cost across all invoices (freight, customs, warehouse) this month. If you need a shortcut, we built a free calculator you can grab here.

“If you don’t want to do the math manually, we built a free Freight Calculator that helps you spot creep across duties, freight, and hidden warehouse fees. Grab it here

3️⃣ The “Invisible” Delay No One Owns

This one hurts: a brand we worked with was ready to launch their new SKU for Cyber Monday.
PO signed. Factory done. Freight booked.

But the factory forgot to file one export doc.
That paperwork delay? It held up the vessel 4 extra days.
Which meant the product missed the inbound appointment.
Which meant the BFCM launch was cut in half.

The quiet killer: tasks that fall into the cracks because no one owns them.

The overlooked move: Build a simple vendor-to-warehouse tracker and assign ownership for each step. We use one inside Move, but honestly, even a Google Sheet works if you update it weekly.

👀 The Takeaway

The biggest risks before BFCM aren’t always dramatic.
They’re the small things nobody is watching:

• The warehouse that’s overbooked
  

• The cost creep hidden in invoices
  

• The paperwork no one remembered to file

Get these right, and you don’t just survive BFCM — you actually enjoy it.

We also covered these BFCM prep moves in depth on the podcast in The One With Essential Strategies for BFCM Success. If you’d rather listen than read, you can catch it here

📺 I shared more examples on our YouTube channel → The Most Expensive Supply Chain Mistakes DTC Founders Make
 💬 If you want to trade notes with other ops leaders, hop into our Slack group.
📊 And if you want to shortcut the landed cost audit, grab the free calculator here.

Here’s to fewer silent killers,
Lara