September is the busiest transition point in the equestrian retail year: the last few shows are taking place, right as new season stock is starting to arrive, and supplier conversations are pressing in.
Two big things are happening in parallel, and they’re not separate tasks that you can tackle one at a time. You need to review what the summer told you and decide what to order next; they’re jobs that are intrinsically linked, and the window to make the right calls is tight.
Your next buying decisions need to be made before the season has properly closed, but you can’t afford to get it wrong, or you’ll feel the repercussions through autumn and winter.
Learning from summer’s equestrian show season
Show season is valuable not just for the money it puts in your till, but because it also produces the most detailed picture of your customers’ buying behaviour you’ll get all year. Fully capture the details of each transaction and each item sold, and you’ll come away with a clear picture of where you were short and where you overbought. The lines you’ll sell over autumn and winter might look a little different due to seasonality, but there’s lots to learn from the summer’s buying behaviours.
For those who’ve been in the industry a long time, there’s a certain amount of instinct that leads buying decisions. When this is backed by real numbers, there’s a meaningful difference to the conversations you’ll have with suppliers. Clean data leads to confident decisions, which in turn leads to stock that sells fast, at full margin. Less need to discount, and less old stock taking up space on your shop floor.
End-of-season discounting has real potential to eat into the margins you spent all summer creating. It’s not always possible to avoid completely, but if your hand is forced, it’s best to be surgical about it. This means being able to identify what’s genuinely stopped selling, so you can apply the discount only where it’s needed, rather than a broad catch-all price cut that affects items still moving at full price.
This applies outside end-of-season stock movement too. For example, loyalty schemes and targeted promotions let you shift slow stock and reward your best customers without cutting prices across the board (but only if you know which stock needs moving and which customers are worth investing in).
If last season’s data has been captured cleanly, the information you need is already in your system.
Balancing restocking with new season arrivals
Replenishing what sold through over the summer and bringing in new autumn and winter ranges aren’t the same task, although they do tend to arrive simultaneously. A customer looking for something you sold out of in July will be disappointed if it’s still out of stock in September, and new season stock sitting in boxes in the back isn’t earning anything. Margin can only be made when it’s on the shelf and on the website.
When you’re running the shop, finishing the show season and managing supplier conversations at the same time, getting new stock live doesn’t always happen as quickly as you’d like. One thing that makes it easier is a retail management system that turns booking stock in and getting it visible into a straightforward process (instead of another manual job you don’t have time for).
In a market where local customers will buy from whoever has the product available, speed to shelf and speed to site matter.
The seasonal review can’t wait
Buying decisions have long lead times, so your end-of-season review is one job you can’t afford to push down the to-do list. It’s not a one-off either; it needs doing continuously through the season and formally at the end of it, while the detail is still fresh and before the next round of supplier conversations take place.
Build this habit and you’ll go into the next season in a stronger position: better stocked on the lines that build margin, less exposed on the ones that don’t, and with a clearer picture overall of how your business is performing. The summer’s data doesn’t stay useful forever, after all.
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