09/15/2026
Peak Season: Getting Your Products Ready
The first step in preparing for peak season is to understand what you will be selling, when you will be selling it, how you will be selling, and who you will be selling to.
Key takeaways
- Peak season preparation requires extensive research into product development and management, combined with clear insight into your marketplaces and sales channels.
- Accurate demand planning requires you to gather and consolidate information from multiple areas, and an excellent starting point is your internal business teams.
- Consumers buying in specific marketplaces or through distinct sales channels will have very different requirements and expectations.
- Effective demand and 3PL management requires both a broad and deep understanding of the specific products that you're bringing to market.
- At the end of this work you'll have a clear map that references all of your product SKUs, the marketplaces you'll be selling them in, and the channels that you use.
- Planning with your 3PL lets you understand the choice and range of all the products you're offering, maximize availability to consumers through all channels, and optimize reordering and restocking.
This is the first of four articles on planning and navigating peak season with your third-party logistics provider. This article covers establishing what you will sell, where, and to whom. Part 2 covers demand profiles, inventory levels, and reordering. Part 3 covers managing operational logistics through the peak period. Part 4 covers maintaining relationships and reviewing performance.
Why peak season planning starts with your products
Managing the peak season is critical for any modern retailer. Whether you're selling online, face-to-face, through an omnichannel approach, or some other combination, you need to meet business and consumer demands in an increasingly competitive marketplace.
The foundation of peak-season success is a robust, reliable, and resilient supply chain, particularly one that's strongly focused on logistics. The right third-party logistics provider (3PL) makes an enormous difference to customer experience, business costs, profitability, and other key results.
We've discussed why it's so important to focus on the peak-season consumer experience in Delight Customers with Peak Season eCommerce Logistics. In that piece, we explored why it's critical to put the customer journey front-and-center and the impact that has on your success. In this series, we're going to focus on the other key enabler, which is how to work with your 3PL to maximize customer satisfaction and business outcomes.
This series is focused around four main priorities:
- Understand product offerings and requirements during peak season.
- Establish demand profiles, inventory levels, and reordering for availability and fast distribution.
- Manage operational logistics throughout the peak period.
- Maintain strong relationships and review activities within your business and with your 3PL.
Within each of these we've highlighted several major topics to help you get ready, explained the different areas for each, and explained how you can work with a 3PL to optimize and streamline how things work.
The ultimate aim is to:
- Give you a step-by-step guide and framework for engaging with your own business and a 3PL.
- Help you prepare effectively for peak season and manage your 3PL throughout.
- Share ideas and best practice advice for a smooth, consumer-focused experience.
- Maximize your 3PL's effectiveness as you follow your business strategy.
Let's get into it.
The benefits of planning your peak season
Planning your peak season with your 3PL gives you some significant advantages:
- Understand the choice and range of all the products you're offering, maximize availability to consumers through all channels, and optimize reordering and restocking.
- Speed up deliveries to end customers so they can order and receive their peak-time products extremely quickly.
- Minimize per-item and fixed costs throughout the supply chain to manage price-sensitive consumers and maximize profit margins.
- Delight consumers through a healthy balance of speed of delivery, costs, item quality, and customer service.
Maintain a competitive advantage throughout all of your marketplaces.
Establish product offerings and requirements during peak season
The first step in preparing for peak season is to understand what you will be selling, when you will be selling it, how you will be selling, and who you will be selling to. This requires extensive research into product development and management, combined with clear insight into your marketplaces and sales channels.
This step focuses on four main activities:
- Establishing accurate communications and information gathering to understand all areas that influence the products you will be selling during peak period.
- Defining the specific marketplaces and sales channels that you'll be using to get consumers to buy your products.
- Creating a clearly defined list of all the product ranges, variations, and SKUs that you will be selling.
- Mapping specific products, marketplaces, and channels onto each other so you can understand the demands and requirements of each.
Talk to GEODIS about how we can support your peak season. Get in touch with GEODIS.
1. Ensure an accurate internal flow of information to understand all business areas influencing the product lifecycle
Accurate demand planning requires you to gather and consolidate information from multiple areas, and an excellent starting point is your internal business teams. It's important to bring strategic imperatives, product development, marketing initiatives, and growth models together to understand how the business perceives the upcoming product pipeline.
This step ensures you create strong communications and information sharing channels with every relevant department and area throughout your business. It's essential to creating a consistent, trusted, and reliable foundation for managing products throughout their entire lifecycle.
Review strategic business plans and goals to understand peak period new product launches, improvements to existing products, and other initiatives.
When to start: 12 to 18 months out, then monthly reviews.
What to consider
- Review overall business plans for each department involved in bringing products to market.
Ensure that you review all types of products:
- New product launches.
- Existing products that are being updated.
- Existing products that are not being updated.
- Relaunching of existing products.
- Create two-way communications and regular check-ins so you're always updated on changes to new product initiatives.
Areas to review include:
- Business strategic planning.
- New product development.
- Ongoing product improvement.
- Program and project management.
- Operations management.
- Order management.
2. Understand and define the marketplaces and sales channels where consumers will be able to buy products during peak season
Consumers buying in specific marketplaces or through distinct sales channels will have very different requirements and expectations. You will need to engage with your sales, operations, and other teams to establish the various factors affecting each marketplace and channel during peak season.
In this step, your priority should be defining each of the separate marketplaces and channels as accurately as possible. We'll cover the product demand in each marketplace and channel in a later step.
Once this step is complete, you'll have all of your marketplaces and channels clearly laid out, and you'll have engaged with your 3PL to understand their capabilities for each one. This will include an early gap analysis of how your 3PL can serve each market or channel, and a plan to bolster their resources if they don't have enough capabilities in specific areas.
Define each marketplace and channel where you will be selling products.
When to start: 12 to 18 months out, then monthly reviews.
What to consider
- Talk to your product development, marketing, sales, and operations teams about each marketplace and channel where you will be selling products.
- List out all of your separate marketplaces so that you can understand likely marketplace product requirements and get an early sight of product demand in each one.
- List out all of your separate sales channels so that you can understand likely marketplace product requirements and get an early sight of product demand in each one.
Marketplaces to consider include:
- Domestic marketplaces, including local, regional, and national.
- Marketplaces in other countries where you operate.
- Specific sectors and industries you provide products to.
Other ways that you segment your marketplace.
Channels to consider include:
- Traditional retail and in-person shopping.
- Direct-to-consumer eCommerce and online retail.
- Third-party online marketplaces that sell to consumers.
- Social media selling.
- Omnichannel.
Co-selling arrangements with other businesses.
Working with your 3PL
- Establish all of the marketplaces and sales channels that your 3PL will need to operate in to meet consumer demand.
- Understand 3PL presence in each marketplace and channel you have identified.
- Get an early sight of your 3PL resources in each marketplace, in terms of inventory storage space and capacity, inbound goods capability, transportation and inbound, logistics, and onward distribution.
- Understand potential gaps in your 3PL's capabilities for specific marketplaces and channels.
- Work with your 3PL to subcontract out to other providers in marketplaces or channels where they do not have a strong presence or there are other gaps.
- Understand that this is just preliminary planning and engagement, and that inventory, distribution, and other demands will firm up over time.
3. Define the specific products and ranges that you will be selling through peak season
Many of the products you sell will be part of larger ranges, with multiple variations and SKUs. Effective demand and 3PL management requires both a broad and deep understanding of the specific products that you're bringing to market.
This is an internal activity that you will use to map your peak season products into your specific marketplaces and sales channels, and, consequently, onto your 3PL requirements.
Understand the types of products you will be selling over the peak period including individual SKUs, product ranges, and variations.
When to start: 12 to 18 months out, then monthly reviews.
What to consider
- Create a consolidated view of all the products that you will be offering to consumers throughout your marketplaces and channels.
- Establish the types and ranges of products you will be offering for sale.
- Establish the SKUs of every individual product, range, and variation that will be available to consumers.
- Collect information together from all relevant departments to have a single view of products coming to market, no matter where they originate.
4. Assign each of your products to marketplaces and channels
All of the work that you've already completed comes together here. This step combines your initial information gathering and communications, your understanding of the marketplaces and sales channels where you'll be offering products, and the range of specific SKUs that you're offering for sale during peak season.
At the end of this step you'll have a clear map that references all of your product SKUs, the marketplaces you'll be selling them in, and the channels that you use. It will allow you to firm up your requirements with your 3PL to ensure they can meet your requirements for product logistics across all of your marketplaces.
Split your product types and SKUs by marketplace and channel.
When to start: 12 months out, then monthly reviews.
What to consider
These activities must be completed for each separate marketplace and channel where you are selling products.
- Establish the types and ranges of products you will be offering for sale through each individual marketplace and channel.
- Map each of your SKUs, product types, and ranges to each marketplace and sales channel.
- Create a consolidated view, by marketplace and sales channel, of all the products that will be offered through each one.
- Establish lead, development, and end-to-end order times from initial sourcing and manufacture, through transportation and logistics, to availability and distribution to end customers.
Working with your 3PL
- Provide your 3PL with details of every marketplace and sales channel where you will be operating and selling products.
- Tell your 3PL about expected end-to-end cycle and lead times by product, so there is enough advanced notice for ordering, transport, and receipt of products by marketplace and sales channel.
- Establish likely turnaround times between consumer purchases and them receiving the product.
- Understand expected delivery times and service levels for each product, split by marketplace and sales channel.
Next in this series: Part 2, demand profiles, inventory levels, and reordering requirements, covering how marketing drives demand, how to build forecasts your 3PL can act on, and how to work out end-to-end lead times.