Planning the festive sale season

Festive sale planning for online sellers starts in the quiet months: products, event prices, stock, packing capacity, ad budgets and cash are decided before Big Billion Days and the Great Indian Festival open, because by then the deadlines have passed.

This guide is for any category, not only gifts. It runs from the marketplace events through Diwali and the regional festivals, and ends with the work after the last sale day.

Gifting brands have extra work, from hampers to corporate orders; our page on how to sell festive gifts online covers it.

What does the festive season ask of sellers?

Decisions made early. Which products take part, at what event prices, with how much stock, packed by whom, behind what ad budget, and with enough cash to carry it all until payouts arrive. By the first sale day, most of those decisions are locked.

The festive months pack demand, discounting, ad competition and delivery pressure into a few weeks. Sellers who plan in the quiet months spend the season executing; sellers who plan late spend it reacting, usually to a stock-out or a cancelled order.

When do the festive sales actually happen?

Usually from September into November. The big marketplace events, Flipkart’s Big Billion Days and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, generally open in September or October, in the weeks before Diwali, and the festivals themselves run through October and November.

Most festival dates follow the lunar calendar and move every year, and marketplaces announce their event dates only weeks ahead. Build the plan from this year’s published dates, not last year’s.

Myntra, Meesho and Ajio run festive events of their own, and every marketplace adds smaller sales around them. List each event your channels run, then mark the deadlines behind it.

How far ahead should planning start?

About three months before the first marketplace event, for anything that needs buying, making or approving. The weeks after that are for submissions, listings and ads; the event itself is for execution, not decisions.

How much stock should you commit?

Enough to fill what you expect to sell at event prices, by size and variant, and no more than you can sell afterwards. Start from last season’s sell-through, not from hope, and plan only the replenishment you can actually get in time.

• Plan by size and variant, not by style. A style that runs out of its middle sizes stops selling long before it sells out.
• Commit only stock you hold or can certainly get. A seller cancellation in sale week costs the order and damages account health.
• Hold a buffer on each channel if the same units sell on several marketplaces and your store, so a rush on one does not oversell the others.
• Keep dated stock small. Anything printed with a festival name or year is worth little the day after.
• Know your supplier’s reorder time before the season, so a reorder is placed while it can still arrive.

How should you price festive deals?

On what each deal leaves you after commission, event fees, shipping, expected returns and the ad cost of each order, never on the size of the discount. A deal that sells out at a loss is still a loss, only faster.

1. Work out contribution per unit at the event price, for every product you nominate.
2. Set a floor below which no deal goes, and keep products that only work at full price out of the event.
3. Count any share of coupons or offers that you fund as part of the discount.
4. Keep prices steady in the weeks before the event. Marketplaces check event prices against recent selling prices, and a raised price can get a deal rejected.
5. Never raise an MRP to make a discount look deeper; marketplaces check, and an inflated MRP is a consumer-law problem as well.

Flipkart’s event rules are covered in our guide on how to sell on Flipkart. Amazon’s Great Indian Festival runs on deal submissions in Seller Central, with rules of its own.

What should change on your listings?

Little that is risky, and everything that is broken. Fix suppressed listings and missing attributes first, then refresh images and copy for the occasion, and set a handling time your team can meet at peak.

• Clear every suppressed or incomplete listing among the products you will advertise.
• Add festive images where they help: the product in use for the occasion, or gift-ready.
• Name the occasion that fits, without stuffing titles with every festival in the year.
• Check size charts and variant families on products that will take event traffic.
• Set handling times for peak volume, not for a quiet week.
• Switch on gift options where the marketplace offers them.

Make these changes weeks before the event, not during it. A listing edited in sale week can go back through review at the worst moment.

How should festive ad budgets be planned?

In three phases: test and build audiences in the quiet weeks, spend hardest just before each event and delivery cut-off, then cut back once the peak passes. Click prices rise when every seller bids at once, so enter the peak with proven ads.

• Marketplace ads: raise sponsored-listing bids and budgets for the event days, on products with stock and margin, and set the step back down in advance.
• Google: sale prices scheduled in the product feed, and a seasonality adjustment where Google Ads offers it, so automated bidding expects the spike.
• Meta: creative tested before the season, and offer creative approved in advance, since every ad is reviewed before it runs.
• Stop rules: pause products that run low on stock, and festival-specific ads once delivery can no longer arrive in time.

Judge the season on return on ad spend after cancellations and returns, not on orders placed. Our performance marketing services set festive budgets from your margin, and our Google Ads and Meta Ads management runs the campaigns.

Can your team keep up with the orders?

Only if packing capacity is planned like stock. Dispatch deadlines do not stretch for volume, and late dispatch and cancellations in sale week count against your account when it matters most.

• Work out how many orders your team can pack in a day, and plan shifts or extra hands for the event days.
• Order packing materials before your suppliers get busy: boxes, mailers, tape, labels and inserts.
• Pre-pack your highest-volume products where you can, so they are ready to label.
• Keep sizes and variants clearly labelled, so wrong-item complaints do not rise with volume.
• If you use a marketplace fulfilment programme, send steady sellers in early, by its inbound cut-off.

We do no fulfilment. Storage, packing and shipping stay with your team or with the marketplace’s own programme; we plan around your capacity, and set handling times and stock to match it.

How do you fund the season?

By planning for money that goes out months before it comes back. Stock, packing materials and ad spend are paid before the season; marketplace payouts arrive on their settlement cycles, net of fees, TCS and TDS, and returns are deducted later.

• Map each payment out and each expected payout in, week by week, through the season and a month beyond it.
• Expect some payouts to be held back as reserves or adjusted for returns after the event.
• Keep ad budgets inside what the cash plan allows, even when the campaigns are working.
• Claim TCS against your GST liability promptly, since it holds up cash until it is claimed.

The festive season is decided in the quiet months and settled in the returns that follow.

Which regional festivals need their own plan?

Any festival that moves demand in a region where you sell. Durga Puja, Onam, Navratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Pongal, Lohri and Chhath each have their own dates, products and buyers, and a national Diwali plan does not cover them.

Durga Puja drives new clothes and home shopping in West Bengal and across eastern India, and orders must arrive before the Puja days begin. Our page on ecommerce services in Kolkata covers that season.

Navratri brings Garba and Dandiya wear to the fore in Gujarat, with chaniya cholis, kurtas and accessories bought in the weeks before. Our page on ecommerce services in Ahmedabad covers it.

Onam in Kerala and Pongal in Tamil Nadu bring their own clothing, kitchen and home buying. For each regional festival, plan stock for that region, test creative in the language your buyers read, and set delivery cut-offs from the farthest pincode you serve.

What happens after the last sale day?

The second half of the season. Returns arrive, claims fall due, settlements need checking, and leftover stock needs a plan; sellers who stop at the last sale day leave money in all four.

• Returns and RTO arrive for weeks after the event. Inspect and log each one, and claim for damaged or swapped items within each marketplace’s time limit.
• Settlements for event orders should be reconciled line by line, with event fees and deal discounts checked against what was agreed.
• Leftover stock goes into planned clearance or the next occasion, before the next season’s stock arrives.
• The review: what sold by size, which deals made money, which ads paid after returns, and what to change next year, written down while it is fresh.

RTO, return to origin, means orders that never reached the buyer, and it deserves its own look after a busy season. Our article on how to reduce RTO sets out the fixes, from address checks to cash-on-delivery rules.

How we plan a festive season with you

We plan the season backwards from each event and delivery cut-off, across your marketplace accounts, storefront and ads. We are an operator, not an agency: our own brands trade through the same calendar, so we plan it from the seller’s side.

Our marketplace account management services handle deal submissions, prices, stock counts and claims, and the ad side sits with our performance marketing team. Packing and shipping stay with you.

Tell us your channels, categories and the events you plan to join, and we will reply with the dates and decisions your season turns on.