I was talking with Russell Kohn from Pale Blue Dot the other day and somehow ended up on holiday planning. In May.
It sounds early until you’ve been through a Q4 where things didn’t go the way you expected. That’s usually when it clicks. The holiday season isn’t won in November. It’s decided much earlier, when you still have time to adjust forecasts, lock in production, and make thoughtful decisions instead of reactive ones.
Most brands don’t treat mid-year that way. They push planning until demand becomes obvious. By then, the meaningful levers are already gone, and what’s left is a series of tradeoffs under pressure. May doesn’t feel like a critical moment, which is exactly why it is.
Aligning Finance and Operations Early
One of the biggest gaps we see is timing. Founders wait until they feel the demand before committing to decisions, but by that point, both the financial and operational sides of the business are already constrained.
From a finance perspective, mid-year is where you pressure test assumptions. You now have several months of actual performance, which means you can move beyond the initial plan and start building a more grounded forecast. That’s when we start identifying where revenue is tracking differently than expected, where margins are compressing, and most importantly, where cash is going to get tight.
At the same time, operations decisions are already being made whether you’re actively driving them or not. Production schedules, supplier commitments, and packaging timelines are getting locked in across the industry. Russell sees this constantly. The brands that move early secure capacity and flexibility. The ones that wait end up taking whatever is available, often at higher cost and with less control.
Finance and operations aren’t separate conversations at this stage. They’re the same conversation, just viewed from different angles.
Reforecasting Isn’t Optional
Mid-year reforecasting is where the business becomes real. At this point, you’re no longer operating on a plan built months ago. You have actual data, and that data should change how you think about the rest of the year.
We push clients to rebuild their forecasts with intention. That means revisiting revenue expectations, pressure testing gross margins, and aligning operating expenses with what’s actually happening in the business. It also means building multiple scenarios. Not just a base case, but a range of outcomes that help you understand where things break and where you have room to push.
What makes this valuable is how it connects to operations. If your forecast shifts, your production plan should shift with it. If margins are tighter than expected, procurement and pricing strategy need to adjust. If you’re planning a heavier marketing push in Q4, your inventory has to support that demand.
Without that alignment, you end up creating problems that don’t show up until later. And when they do, they’re harder and more expensive to fix.
Inventory Planning Is Where Things Break
Inventory planning is where the tension between growth and discipline shows up most clearly. Everyone wants to meet demand, especially during the holidays, but very few brands want to deal with excess inventory sitting on the balance sheet in January.
From an operations standpoint, the goal is not perfect precision. It’s informed flexibility. That starts with understanding your lead times, having honest conversations with suppliers about capacity, and building plans that account for variability rather than assuming everything will go according to plan.
From a finance perspective, inventory is one of the largest uses of cash. Every unit you produce represents capital that’s no longer available for something else. That’s why inventory decisions need to be framed as capital allocation decisions, not just operational ones. How much can you afford to commit? What happens to your liquidity if sell-through is slower than expected? How does that impact your ability to invest elsewhere in the business?
The brands that manage this well aren’t guessing. They’re making deliberate tradeoffs based on both financial constraints and operational realities.
Working Capital: Solve It Before It’s Urgent
If there’s one pattern that repeats across almost every growing brand, it’s waiting too long to think about cash. By the time the need becomes obvious, the options are more limited and the terms are less favorable.
Mid-year is when you should be evaluating your working capital needs and putting solutions in place. That might mean establishing a line of credit, exploring inventory financing, or simply tightening internal processes that improve cash flow. The exact approach will vary, but the timing matters more than the structure.
When you approach financing proactively, you have the ability to present a clear plan, clean financials, and a thoughtful forecast. That changes the conversation. When you wait until Q4 and need capital immediately, you’re negotiating from a position of urgency.
There are also internal levers that are often overlooked. Payment terms, collections processes, and improvements in the order-to-cash cycle can all free up capital without bringing in external financing. In many cases, it’s not about raising more money, it’s about running a tighter operation.
Strategic Pivots and Marketing Alignment
Mid-year is also the right time to reassess what’s actually working in the business. By now, patterns have started to emerge. Certain products are outperforming, others are underdelivering, and customer behavior is becoming clearer.
Those insights should drive decisions heading into Q4. From an operations standpoint, that means focusing production and resources on the products that have the highest likelihood of success. From a finance perspective, it means aligning forecasts and margin expectations with that reality.
Marketing plays a critical role here as well. Holiday campaigns require planning, budget, and coordination with inventory. If marketing drives demand that the business can’t fulfill, the impact goes beyond lost sales. It affects customer experience and brand perception.
When finance, operations, and marketing are aligned, the business moves with more confidence. When they’re not, you feel it quickly.
What This Means Going Into Q4
Holiday success is rarely the result of last-minute execution. It’s the outcome of decisions made months earlier, when there was still time to think clearly and act deliberately.
Treating May as a strategic planning moment gives you the opportunity to align your forecast, secure your supply chain, and put the right financial structure in place before demand accelerates. It turns what is usually a reactive period into something much more controlled.
The brands that perform well in Q4 tend to have one thing in common. They didn’t wait for the pressure to show up before they started planning for it.
If you’re evaluating your forecast, operational readiness, or working capital strategy heading into Q4, the teams at Basecamp Consulting Group and Pale Blue Dot are always happy to have a conversation.