The short answer: plan your Black Friday stock three to four weeks out. Use last year’s sales for the same week as your starting order, check how long each supplier takes to deliver, count your best-sellers so you order against real numbers, and put slow stock — not best-sellers — into your deals. Black Friday 2026 falls on Friday 27 November, with Small Business Saturday (US) on 28 November.
1. Start from last year’s sales, item by item
Your best forecast is your own history. Pull sales for the same week last year for each product, not just a total. A product that sold 40 units that week is a far better starting point than a guess, and it shows you which lines carried the weekend.
2. Check every supplier’s lead time
Work backwards from the date you need stock on the shelf. If a supplier takes three weeks to deliver, that order has to go in this week. Slow suppliers first, fast ones last.
3. Count your best-sellers now
Your system says you have 30 of something; the shelf may say 22. Count your top lines before you order so the order is based on what is really there. This takes an hour and prevents the most expensive mistake of the season: running out of the thing everyone came in for.
4. Put dead stock in the deals
Discount what isn’t selling, not what sells anyway. Bundling a slow item with a popular one, or making it the headline offer, turns stock that has been tying up cash for months back into money — at the moment you need cash for reorders.
After the weekend
Write down what sold out and when. That note is next year’s order. If you use a POS that records sales per item and per day, it’s already written down for you.
Related: how to avoid stock-outs · running a quick stocktake.