Wow! A sarcastic title. That's not like me at all is it? It seems however, that for many people, this piece of valuable information comes as a bit of a surprise.
It's not uncommon in the retail world, plenty of people choose to do their Christmas shopping around 5pm on the 23rd of December and yet still find themselves moaning at the endless queues, overworked staff and the fact that there's only one decent Scalectrix left on the shelves to be fought over by twenty dads, and we all know they only really want it for themselves anyway don't we?
Is it all just down to poor memory? Do they suddenly wake up on the day before Christmas Eve and remember that, not only do they have kids, but that Santa Claus has never actually been proven to exist (sorry kids, but if you're old enough to read this blog, you're old enough to know the truth - Santa is nothing more than a corporate puppet - a marketing tool - a media whore, if you will)?
No, let's be a little more charitable to these people. It's just bad planning, The problem is that lastminute.com used to just be a website, but it evolved into a state of mind. Maybe it was the other way around though - if we all did plan ahead properly, there wouldn't be any last minute deals would there?
Now what did you do last Christmas? Did you send cards? Did you donate the money to charity? Did you give your staff and customers gifts or did you simply cry "Bah humbug" and chuck half a lump of extra coal in the fire on Christmas Eve? In which case, why are you still heating your offices with coal fires? This is the 21st century you know.
Whatever you did, are you PLANNING on doing it again? A lot of companies like to measure the effectiveness of their Christmas plans, but surely that only needs to take you up to April - six months will offer you more than a decent indication of whether or not something is working.
Therefore, our busiest period for Christmas merchandise should be around April and May, but sadly it is still November - a time when people want all of us magical little elves to turn 4 week lead times into 4 days and have manufacturers lower their prices despite the fact that demand has doubled. Frankly if you believe any of that is possible, then I imagine a belief in Father Christmas is really not that much of a stretch for you.
Oh! So that's the problem - everyone's clinging to their inner delusional five year old! That's alright then, just put your feet up and let's see if 500 diaries magically find their way under your tree.
So please grab your 2009 diary (what do you mean you haven't got one yet?) and make a note in April to organise your Christmas merchandise, otherwise you'll have to remember the words of that famous poem:
Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the house
Not a creature was stirring
Because they were all down at Tesco....
crapping themselves with worry.
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1 comment:
I haven't heard that version before - but seems to be exactly what happens.
Another thing is that being the excellent company you are, you do manage to pull off the whole "4 weeks into 4 days" - and so they assume that you can do it each year...
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