What appears in shops during the holiday season was ordered long before anyone knew how the year would go. That commitment shapes both the range and the eventual discounting.
Manufacturing lead times force early decisions
Goods produced overseas require months between order and arrival, covering production scheduling, quality checks, ocean freight and inland distribution.
Working backwards from a delivery date that must precede the season, the order has to be placed while the previous season is still recent.
Buyers are therefore forecasting demand for a period they cannot yet observe, using last year's pattern as the main evidence.
The quantity is effectively fixed
Once production is committed, adjusting the quantity is slow and expensive. Adding units means a new production run and premium freight to arrive in time.
Reducing them means cancellation costs or accepting the goods anyway, since the factory has already bought materials and scheduled capacity.
Retailers consequently plan on the assumption that the ordered quantity is what they will have, and manage the price rather than the volume.
Forecast errors surface as discounts
An over-ordered item must be sold within the season or carried for a year, and carrying seasonal goods costs storage, capital and the risk of looking dated.
Discounting is the fastest correction available, which is why the depth of a markdown reflects the size of the forecasting error more than the quality of the product.
Under-ordered items simply sell out and are never discounted at all, which is the opposite error and less visible to shoppers.
Air freight is the emergency lever
When a product sells far beyond forecast, retailers can restock by air at many times the cost of sea freight, and they do so for items where the margin supports it.
That decision is made mid-season on live sales data, and the restocked units usually arrive at full price because the freight has consumed the discount room.
An item that returns to stock late in a season at an unchanged price often arrived this way.
Reading availability as a signal
Deep discounts early suggest a large order meeting weak demand, and further reductions are likely as the season progresses.
Thin availability with no discount suggests the opposite, and waiting for a price cut on such an item usually means not buying it at all.
Stock depth is visible to any shopper walking a shop floor, and it carries information the price ticket does not.