Shall we take a brutally honest look at the highs and lows of the 2025 festive retail season?

Hi, I'm Clare Bailey, founder of Retail Champion.

In this episode of Retail Reckoning, we dig into what worked, what flopped, and what business owners should focus on to ensure 2026 doesn’t leave any cash on the table.

This episode is packed with straight-talking advice: from sellout items that vanished too soon, to stubborn shelf-sitters that eroded your margins.

I've got some practical checklists to share with you for reviewing customer feedback, staffing woes, and digital visibility—making sure you don’t miss a thing.

Whether you’re a seasoned shop owner or an ambitious start-up, this episode is your guide to turning post-Christmas chaos into clarity, actionable strategy, and a winning 2026.

Let’s get your Retail Reckoning together—no dusty shelves allowed!

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Do you want to make sure that there's no cash left on the table by

your retail business in 2026? Well, if so, this

episode will definitely help you with that.

Hello to the lovely retailers, hospitality heroes, makers and

independent legends. Welcome back to Retail Reckoning. I'm Claire

Bailey, the retail champion and today we're diving into the truth

telling margin making, if slightly

painful Christmas debrief. Yep, it's that time.

Retail Reckoning. No space for

dusty shelves.

Put the leftover mince pies down, grab yourself a coffee or

something stronger and let's take a brutally honest look at what actually

happened this peak. What worked, what flopped and

what needs to change if 2026 is going to be the year you

stop leaving money on the table. If there's one thing I know,

after working with thousands of independent businesses, the

real growth isn't in working harder, it's in working

smarter, as the saying goes. Starting with the things

that quite often get ignored. So,

right, my first question. Did Christmas deliver what you expected?

And I don't want the glossed up. Oh, we did find. Thanks. Version

the Truth let's talk about two

classic situations that every independent business owner

secretly obsesses over but doesn't really often sit down to

analyze properly. What about the sellout

items you kicked yourself over because you weren't properly

stocked? Furthermore, what about the stubborn

slow movers that clung to the shelves like, yeah, you,

granny's tinsel? Let's start with these.

The sellouts are missed margin. Think about what flew out the door faster

than a toddler after Santa. What sold out a week too early?

Why did customers keep asking after you'd run dry? Have you

got any more of that? These are the moments that sting because they're pure,

unfiltered lost profit. You could have sold more, you could have made

more. And next year you will if you capture

this properly. This is about backing your winners

and making sure your stock profile is there

to support your sales forecast and be bold. Then we

need to look at your shelf sitters. That's pure margin

erosion. These need to be the ones that you have a when

it's gone, it's gone policy on. But they end up being the ones

you had to discount. They've eaten up margin.

That made you ask yourself, why on earth did I think this was a good

idea? These lines are not just annoying,

but they're data. That insight, despite being

a failure potentially is important, sometimes humiliating,

but valuable, and data nonetheless to inform future decision

making. Data is what gives you the power to

make better decisions in 2026.

The next question that we all ask ourselves,

did you have enough staff? Was the staffing, service and

customer experience really up to standard? Do

you believe your service levels were solid or did returns

spike? What were customers actually saying about you? The good

and the bad. Here's the hard, cold truth.

Basically, your peak season exposes everything. And if

there's a weakness, Christmas is going to shine a blinding

fairy light on it. So I've got a couple of checklists for you so we

don't miss anything. What you need to review are

compliments and complaints, service bottlenecks,

did you have queues abandoned, baskets offline, and

more importantly, online product questions you got asked a thousand

times. Packaging issues, did anything get damaged?

Things that delighted your customers and things that irritated them.

So that's my checklist using that. That's where

you find where the golden moment lies. Because

every frustration is a fixable problem. Every

positive is something you can repeat and do more of

the same. Then we have to look at things that are

somewhat beyond your control, but not entirely. Things like footfall,

online traffic and so on. Were your customer numbers

up? Did you get more E commerce orders?

And have you got more people signed up for emails or any

loyalty system, newsletter or more following on your

social channels? If your answer is yes, that's great.

If it's no, that would be now a priority. If the

answer's none, now, I'm not sure.

Then we probably need to talk about your analytics setup because if you don't

know your numbers, it's like driving with a blindfold on.

It's really important to understand what's going on in the business

and understanding some of these metrics, although they

don't directly translate to sales, they can

translate to sales. The more people who are listening to you, the

more people who are likely to buy from you or recommend you.

The next part is where things get a little bit juicy.

Your range review. This is your biggest lever for profit

now. Your range is the single biggest driver of margin, cash

flow and customer satisfaction and loyalty. And at Christmas,

it's the most revealing moment to measure whether your range

worked or not. So I have another checklist for you.

I want you to refer to your business data, epos or whatever

else you've got and check the following things. So

this would be your sell through rates, your margins,

your SKU count, and therefore skew proliferation. So,

example, you've got two SKUs that do the same job and therefore

identification of potential cannibalization between

SKUs where you could have consolidation of range. Also look for

gaps where perhaps you weren't offering a good, better

best, or there was a potential to add another category

or type of product to increase basket size and so on. You need to

spot your overcrowded categories where perhaps you've just got too

much choice. And also going on from that. I

think it's important to understand the impulse buying

behaviors, the things that you put right next to the till, what other

things that people might pick up. And if you're in say a ladies

wear retailer and there might be a little tiny handbag sized

perfume or some incense sticks or a relaxing

candle next to the till, would that bump up the basket size that people just

pick up whilst they're waiting? And then back to my checklist. You have to

review your seasonal products versus continuity items because seasonal

make you a boost in profit in the season, but

continuity is what keeps you alive all year round. And so this

is where your epos data matters. And if you don't already have an epos,

it's probably one of the singular most important tools for any

retail, hospitality, leisure business that you can imagine.

Your data won't lie, but sometimes your gut feel

will and moderating gut feel and instinct

with tangible business data is really, really important.

So when it comes to EPOS data, got you another short checklist.

You need to use things like last year's sales, this year's trends,

which won't come from your epos but might come from reading documents. For example,

there's trend documents available online and there's insights and

reports. And if you're lucky enough to be able to get down to the British

Library, you can get access to a lot of that for free. You've got your

own customer feedback, their social comments. You can speak to

your suppliers and get industry predictions and also

buyer insights in terms of what categories your suppliers believe

are on trend. But your EPOS data is essential for things

like last year's sales margin, promotional performance, sell

through rate, stock cover and so on. You use this kind of

insight to then begin to shape your 2026 range

architecture. And that's your high level overview, the shape of the range

before you break it down into more detail. I mean you might

have some indication on categories, percentage performance by category

and so on. But maybe you haven't gone as far as category subcategory,

SKU count. Within the SKU count, how do each product perform

in terms of good, better, best? You might not fully have

appreciated how you might pull back on continuity

lines to allow space for highly Seasonal allocations

and impulse purchases. It might not necessarily at this stage include

your feature lines, your continuity and your newness strategy. But these are all

really, really important to ultimately range

architecture leading into range plan. And this

is the exact kind of prep work you need to be doing

now before you hit up the trade shows in early

February. So if you're walking into Spring Fair, you know, on the

2nd of February, for example, if you walk into Spring, Spring Fair or Top Draw

or Moda or any of these other major exhibitions and shows

without the analysis done, it's like you're shopping blind.

But you're not shopping blind for you, you're shopping blind for your

ideal customer. So you have to put yourself in the

shoes of the ideal customer, not think about what you like. Well, unless

you're lucky enough to be your own ideal customer, which doesn't apply to

everybody. And you need to think about all these different things. What can

you sell in volume? What will make you the maximum margin? What is

going to actually wow the customers, bring them through the

door and keep them coming back throughout the season, given that in

February you're buying potentially as far ahead

as autumn, winter 2026, and beginning to

even entertain Christmas 2026, 10 months

early. This is so fundamentally important because I read

somewhere that depending on the nature of the retail business, Christmas sales

represent between 30 and 60% of your annual profits. This

is not one to get wrong. And leading on to that, we look at Product

Life Cycle, and my brilliant colleague Kim,

who's even more geeky than me, breaks this down using the

Boston Consulting matrix into stars, dogs, cash cows and question

marks. And that's a real retail discipline.

So if it's a star, it's selling well and it's

profitable. If it's a cash cow, it reliably sells.

It's not particularly glamorous, but it keeps the money coming in. If it's a

dog, it's barely selling and wasting space. And unless

that dog exists in a basket with a star or

a cash cow. Thus you could suggest to yourself that the

consumer buys the basket and if the

dog wasn't on your range, they wouldn't buy the higher profitability

items. That's something to get rid of. And a question mark is

maybe new, maybe you're unsure at the moment, it could go either way.

But it's one to watch. And this leads to some serious

decisions. Obvious really, if you think about it. Invest

in the winners, support the rising stars, delete the

dogs, as long as they don't belong in the basket with some of the better

products and test the question marks before committing heavy

stock levels and significant order sizes. This is how you're actually going to

protect your cash flow and avoid your sort of January

to February fear. Range shopping, when you

realize your stock levels are a little bit out of whack

stock, leads me on to thinking about supplier management.

I think it's really important to think you're not alone. Suppliers work with

potentially hundreds, if not thousands of businesses like yours, and they have

insights, so why not use them? Suppliers are more than

always willing to give those insights. And supplier management

is all about creating a collaborative relationship.

So you can ask them questions like what's selling well in the wider customer

base. They don't have to tell you who the customers are, as long as it's,

you know, within your relatively local geographic market.

You can ask them what's falling off the radar for them, what's tanking

and why. So what are the suppliers considering

delisting that you should be potentially delisting to? The

really killer question is what point of sale, as in

posters, signage, window displays and so on. Or marketing support can they offer

you? Because quite often suppliers will offer you marketing support

so that you can promote their product and stimulate their sales too.

Because remember, you're their distribution channel. Without

you, who the hell are they going to sell to? I mean, they might be

able to sell online, but having physical retail outlets certainly

makes their life a whole lot easier. Then you could ask them things

like are they planning to discount for promotions and are they planning to pass those

discounting opportunities on to you? You could ask them what they've got

in new product development for next year, so looking even for

further ahead. But you could also ask them what's going to be discontinued so you

can plan your stock profiles and so on. And the thing is, most small

retailers don't ask. The big guys definitely do. And suppliers

aren't going to volunteer the information if they're not asked. You know, it's just extra

work. So ask always, because if you don't ask, you don't get

linking to some of the comments on suppliers as well. We've got to consider your

pricing and promotions and it's more about value and less about

about margin giveaway if you really want success, because you

can't discount your way to success unless you're a scale of

operation akin to Aldi and Lidl, which

generally most aren't. It's just not viable, it's not

sustainable. But you can build strategies that add value without destroying

Your margin, things like the pricing ladder. I love a pricing

ladder. Good, better, best. Your target customer wants to solve

a problem and you have, let's say, three products that solve their problem.

One is good, it has to be good and it's at the entry price

point and that solves the problem. But generally speaking, they kind of

want a few more bells and whistles. So they might trade up to better and

if they're feeling particularly flush, they might go for best.

Usually people settle at the better level. So it's a bit like a

standard distribution curve. A few buy it good, a few buy it best, and most

buy it better. But at least you're giving choice to people. So if they're having

a difficult month, maybe your customers are self employed and they've had a contract

canceled. They might trade down to good or they've had a big win and they

might treat themselves to best. But having that structure in place

gives them the choice without overwhelm. And I think it's also important

to consider promotions. They're a lever to influence buying

behaviors from your consumers and they're not a crutch to get rid

of dead stock. That would be clearance, which is fundamentally different.

So promotions can be things like highlighting products, creating

bundles, adding value through other means than just

discounting. A way to manage this is to tie

offers to a marketing calendar. So using calendar events like

school holidays, religious celebrations, Easter, Christmas and so

on, Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, sporting

events, I mean it really depends what you sell, what key

activities go on your marketing calendar. But then you can use promotions and

window displays and highlighting to draw attention to products that are

relevant to a particular moment in time or

to do with end of season, which is where we're looking more at clearance than

we are at what you would class as promotion. And I do

think there's an important distinction there. You can also link pricing

to stock levels. So having the when it's gone, it's gone. Buying

small batches, particularly of high fashion or high

seasonable items is really important because it creates the fear of missing out.

And it means that people are more likely to buy at full price

rather than not get one at all. And as we mentioned before,

in supplier management there's often a lot of supplier funded support available

and it's definitely available, so ask them and use it

when it's offered. And these are really the strategies you need to

use to protect your profitability while still delivering some excitement

and newness and perceived value in store or online.

The other area linking to that promotions and so on

is to make sure you get your marketing, your

merchandising in store. And I guess the E commerce merchandising is

just as relevant and everything discoverability,

right? Because I think

2026, we won or lost on this. So the first one is

about having a good integrated marketing strategy

online and offline. So getting those promotional calendars we just

touched on sorted now and not having last minute

scrambles so you can plan things like the campaigns you

might do according to the time of year, the themes you might go with.

So love is in the air for Valentine's Day. Everyone's got

a mum. So Mother's Day themes of any types and

link your campaigns to your themes and then that flows through.

So if you've got physical presence, window displays, online

presence, it could be banners or a change to a little bit of a

template or something particular about the way the styling looks.

Then you could even be looking at events, whether they're local events or

events that you run. I know in a couple of locations they do

certain trails like an Easter egg hunt and some they're really useful

because it gets people out and about families collecting

stickers or tokens or something to redeem an Easter egg at the end, but it

gets them to go into the shop. Then this can percolate through to things like

email marketing content. I've already mentioned website

look, but you know, refreshes. It might be about changing some of the

language and product descriptions to make it more

search friendly for that particular time of year or campaign.

You might be able to offer online gift guides, top products for Mother's

Day, under £10, under £20, under £50 and so on.

And there could be local partnerships whereby you could collaborate. So you

might be a confectioner and there's a florist down the road and there's somebody that

does balloon art. You could come together and put something

beautiful together as a package, as a local partnership, or

simply put on a local shopping event. There's loads

and loads of opportunities to bring online and offline marketing to

life. When it comes to E commerce. I'd have to ask if you're not selling

online, why? Because it's affordable. And

even if it only acts as a catalog and drives footfall to your store,

it still gives people an insight into the products that you offer. And

then further down the line, if they've experienced your service, they might want to buy

online, click and collect or come in and collect and whatever, but it just

offers you that extra channel to market if you are selling

online, it's important to think all the time about how to

make it as frictionless as possible, how to make it easier, faster,

cleaner and clearer, get that transaction through

and to embed things like remarketing for basket abandonment.

And Steph in our team is one of the genius e commerce people. She had

an independent business herself for 10 years and ran a highly

effective e commerce site. So if anybody's worrying about that,

give me a shout and I'll hook you up with Steph. Actually, to be fair,

Steph's also our search guru. She advocates local search,

as do I. Because your Google business profile is

free and it's your shop window for customers who haven't found you yet.

The number of searches for the thing you offer near me

that people do on their phones when they're in a place they don't particularly know

is immense. And having the pin on your

premises not sent for a postcode, having some good photography, having some

decent wording, correct opening hours, oh please don't get me

started on that. How many times have I turned up somewhere and they're closed but

it says they're open on Google. It's just so simple and

don't even need a website. You can just take people to your Facebook page or

your Instagram if you haven't yet set up e commerce. But it's so

powerful. My argument on this would be if you haven't fully optimized

and looked at the potential of your Google business profile, get started.

In fact, start yesterday.

That leads us into social media. Customers buy from brands

they know like and trust and if you're silent online, they don't really know

you. So having a good presence on the

consumer facing platforms, so the likes of Facebook,

Instagram, TikTok, you know, those kind

of platforms. But if you're not already there, start with

one, get that right and build from that. But in 2026,

being invisible on socials just makes people wonder if

you're a scammer or not. They expect it. It's a simple

fix. Just to be visible.

I've said lots now, but my final word,

I guess I want 2026 to be your best year yet.

I want it to be my best year. I want it to be everybody's best

year. Despite what's happened in the last two budgets. I

think if you're brave and bold and decisive, everything

you need to make next year exceptional is already in your hands.

If you've got the data from this Christmas, great. If not, let's look at Getting

you an EPOS in place, the experience your customers had,

learn from it, the gaps in your range, build on it,

and the opportunities just staring you in your face, like out of stocks

or not sold through products, sort it. And if

you're still sitting there thinking, claire, I know I need to do this,

I don't have the time or the systems or the headspace, then just please reach

out. I've got a really fabulous team at the Retail Champion and we've worked

with thousands of independent retail, hospitality, leisure, personal care and

visitor facing businesses. And we help with everything from strategy to e

commerce, even email marketing, socials.

Kim's brilliant on store layout and merchandising and customer

experience. I cover, along with Kim, range planning,

supply chain pricing and promotions, your EPOs, analytics, how to

make decisions from your data and ultimately it's all about turning the

chaos that you might be feeling and the overwhelm you might be feeling

into clarity, strategy and actions

that actually deliver the business results that you need given

the backdrop of the prevailing economic situation. So if

you want 2026 to be the year, you stop winging it and start winning.

We'd love to help, just give us a shout. I'm happy to have a no

obligation introductory call. Check out retailchampion.co.uk

and let's get you future ready. Well, anyway, here's to an

incredible year ahead. One built on smart decisions, solid

processes and the courage to take bold action. You've got this and

I'm here to help you make sure you absolutely smash it. Until

next time, go be brilliant. My name's Claire Bailey, the

Retail Champion and this was Retail reckoning. Yeah,

Retail reckoning. Retail

reckoning. No space for dusty

shelves. Cause retail reckoning

owns the floor.

Sam.