By April 2025, John Lewis was already working on Christmas 2026. Its buying team is now developing the theme for Christmas 2027 while this year’s decorations, toys and store designs make their way through the supply chain.
Buying manager Cydney Ball summed up the retailer’s rolling timetable: “In some ways, it’s Christmas every day for us.”
The 20-month lead time sounds extreme, until the sums behind peak trading are truly considered. Around a fifth of the UK’s £491bn annual retail spend takes place in November and December, according to British Retail Consortium figures cited in Retail Gazette’s report.
Yet retailers are also trying to secure that revenue against an unreliable shipping market. Diversions in the Red Sea and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz have tightened global capacity. By July, the average price of moving a 40ft container from China had reached £3,961, up 61 per cent on a year earlier, according to Xeneta.
Bringing orders forward gives retailers more time when vessels are delayed or routes change. It also brings forward cash commitments and adds storage, handling and insurance costs.
Peak is getting longer, without getting flatter
Retailers have steadily pulled Christmas forward. Festive ranges now appear while summer stock is still selling, and shoppers increasingly use the extra time to spread the cost.
John Lewis opened its online Christmas shop with 115 days to go in 2025. It recorded its first search spike on 3 August, with searches for Christmas decorations up 128 per cent year on year that month and searches for wreaths up 367 per cent.
That earlier interest didn’t remove the final rush. For example, Aldi served almost three million customers on 23 December 2024, its busiest trading day on record. A year later, Fortnum & Mason’s footfall peaked on 22 December, 11 per cent above the previous year’s busiest day.
The pattern leaves stores managing an extended seasonal range followed by abrupt surges around Black Friday, the final days before Christmas and the January sales. The BRC found that shoppers made fewer, more targeted trips in December 2025, when total UK footfall fell 2.9 per cent year on year. Small forecasting errors therefore have less time to correct themselves: a missing bestseller, an understaffed collection desk or a late replenishment can cost a sale on one of the few visits a customer intends to make.
Earlier deliveries move the risk inland
Ordering early reduces exposure to disruption at sea, but the stock still has to go somewhere. Distribution centres can hold some of it, although warehouse space is not unlimited and every extra week of storage carries a cost. Sending it to shops too soon can fill backrooms needed for current ranges.
This makes store-level allocation more important. A national forecast may be accurate while individual branches are left with the wrong mix. Retailers need local sales history, current demand signals and enough flexibility to redirect stock before the final weeks.
Seasonal inventory should arrive in waves tied to floor-set dates and expected sell-through, rather than in one large drop that leaves colleagues working around unopened cartons.
Physical capacity also needs an honest audit. Nominal backroom square footage says little about how much usable space remains once cages, waste, online orders and staff areas are accounted for. Temporary fixtures must be included in fire and evacuation planning, while delivery slots need to reflect the additional time required to unload and sort seasonal lines.
The same advance work applies to the selling floor. Window installations, power for digital displays, queue routes and promotional fixtures all compete for space. Maintenance that might be tolerated in a quiet month (an unreliable lift, a failing refrigerator or a weak Wi-Fi area) becomes a true trading headache when stock and customer numbers rise.
The labour plan has to follow the work
Last September, the John Lewis Partnership launched its largest seasonal recruitment drive to date, advertising 13,700 jobs. Some 11,500 were based in John Lewis and Waitrose shops, with the balance in distribution centres and the supply chain.
The scale offers a realistic example of what peak asks of a store estate. John Lewis expected more than 30 million visits to its shops during the golden quarter, alongside 180 million website visits. In the week before Christmas, Waitrose planned to pick and deliver more than 8 million cases of product to its stores.
Recruiting earlier doesn’t require retailers to put seasonal staff on the payroll months before demand arrives as much as it gives them time to identify the work, set start dates and train people before the busiest shifts.
That work now covers more than tills and replenishment. Seasonal colleagues may pick online orders, hand over click-and-collect purchases, manage queues, process returns or support booked services. Sainsbury’s and Argos recruited 19,000 people for Christmas 2025 and said they had also upskilled existing colleagues to handle on-demand orders and move between store tasks.
Training needs to reflect that range. A new colleague who can replenish stock but cannot use the collection system or answer a customer’s delivery query adds pressure to experienced staff. Store managers also need enough trained supervisors on late shifts and peak weekends, when incidents, stock discrepancies and service failures are most likely to require a decision.
One store, several routes to the customer
Stores remain responsible for most retail spending, even as online demand grows. The Office for National Statistics found that internet sales represented 28.3 per cent of total retail spend in December 2025, up from 28 per cent in November. Online sales values were 11.1 per cent higher than a year earlier.
Those figures do not split the customer neatly into online and in-store camps. CACI research found that 87 per cent of UK consumers planned to use both channels for Christmas gifts in 2025. A shopper may research online, inspect a product in a branch, order it from a phone and return it to a store after Christmas.
Peak planning must account for each route. Collection areas need enough shelving and a clear method for separating orders. Handheld devices, printers and charging points must be tested before volumes rise. Stock records have to recognise reservations quickly, or shop-floor colleagues risk selling an item already promised to an online customer.
Queue design is important too. A collection line that blocks a department or shares one service point with returns can slow several parts of the store at once. Retailers can use quieter weeks in autumn to test signage, measure handover times and decide when a second desk should open.
Fewer visits place more weight on the store experience
Early planning doesn’t guarantee customers will turn up. UK footfall during the 2025 golden quarter fell 2.2 per cent year on year, according to BRC data. Shopping centres recorded a 5.1 per cent decline in December, compared with a 0.9 per cent fall on high streets and 2.5 per cent at retail parks.
The figures make availability and ease of shopping more valuable. A customer making a targeted trip expects the advertised product to be present and easy to find. Clear navigation, visible prices and short queues protect conversion when there are fewer browsing visits to make up for a poor one.
Stores can also give customers a reason to stay. John Lewis used Santa experiences, workshops and member rewards in 2025, while Booths credited in-store events and tastings as part of its Christmas offer. These activities require operational planning of their own, including bookings, queue space, cleaning and safeguarding. They work best when the event calendar, seasonal floor plan and staffing budget are agreed together.
Security cannot wait until the decorations go up
Peak combines crowded shops, high-value gift lines and a large intake of new staff. The latest BRC crime report recorded 5.5 million detected incidents of shoplifting in 2024/25. Violence and abuse against retail workers averaged 1,600 incidents a day, while retailers’ spending on crime prevention reached almost £5.5bn over five years.
Security planning should influence seasonal layouts before fixtures are ordered. High-risk stock needs good sightlines and appropriate protection without making the shop difficult to navigate. Collection desks require clear identity and handover procedures. Seasonal recruits need practical guidance on de-escalation, when to call a manager and why they should never put themselves at risk to stop a theft.
Busy trading also increases everyday safety risks. More cages, temporary displays and customer queues can narrow routes through the store. Managers need scheduled checks throughout the day rather than relying on an opening inspection completed before deliveries and footfall build.
Peak runs into January
The festive operation does not finish when the doors close on Christmas Eve. Returns, exchanges, gift-card spending and clearance activity can keep service desks and stockrooms busy well into January.
After Christmas 2024, Parcelhero estimated that £1.51bn of unwanted gifts and goods were heading back to retailers. Returns on 2 January were 6.8 per cent higher than on the same day a year earlier, while Royal Mail recorded volumes 52 per cent above a typical day in the previous month.
Stores need space to receive, inspect and sort those items without mixing them with click-and-collect orders or new-season deliveries. Colleagues also need clear rules on extended Christmas returns, proof of purchase and the handling of damaged goods. Products that can be resold should return to available stock quickly; leaving them in a returns cage loses selling time and makes inventory records less dependable.
The labour plan must extend far enough to cover this work. Ending most temporary contracts immediately after Christmas can leave permanent teams managing returns while also setting the January sale and receiving new ranges.
What an early start should deliver
John Lewis’ 20-month timetable begins with themes, product development and buying decisions. Store readiness has a shorter lead time, although the operational plan should be taking shape well before festive stock reaches the shop floor.
By late summer, retailers should know how much seasonal stock each branch can hold, where overflow inventory will sit and when floor sets will change. Recruitment dates should work back from training needs. Collection capacity, devices, maintenance, local events, security coverage and January returns all need named owners and deadlines.
Starting early buys time to find mistakes while they are still cheap to fix. A retailer can’t control a blocked shipping route or December weather. However, it can make sure the collection desk has enough shelving and the returns team is still on the rota in January.
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