Around this time every year, the same questions start landing in our inbox. How deep should we go, and can we afford to sit Black Friday out? Last month our Account Director Emma Butler wrote about why the brands that win sale season will be the ones with a plan. This month, we asked two of our partners what that plan looks like from the inside.
Bellroy and Mukti Organics approach the period very differently. Bellroy puts its whole business behind the season, while Mukti built its own event so it could step off the calendar entirely. What struck us is how much they agree on.
Decide early so you don't have to shout
Tyler House, CMO of Bellroy, describes the season as "the culmination of the whole business humming along." For Bellroy, that means getting everyone aligned early, so the brand can stay true to itself when the pressure builds. "Starting early is not only to ensure everyone in the business is operating off the same shared context, but also so we don't need to raise our voice during this period."
Kiyana Lloyd, Creative and Social Media Director at Mukti Organics, plans with the same discipline for a different reason. Mukti formulates and manufactures everything in-house, in small batches. "We don't have thousands of units of excess, end-of-season or near-expiry stock to move," she says. "We need to plan carefully across manufacturing, stock, staffing, our website and campaign before we announce anything."
Stay recognisable
For Tyler, the risk that comes up most is that the brand stops behaving like itself. "It's such a commercially critical time for many brands that it could be very easy to look back afterwards and not quite recognise the brand you just presented."
Mukti answered that pressure by building its own moment. Mukti Online Shopping Night happens once a year, on a different date each time, with only a few days' notice. "Constant discounting trains customers to wait for the next promotion," Kiyana says. "It can create a huge short-term spike, but we don't believe that's a healthy long-term strategy for our brand or our customers." The rest of the year, Mukti bundles offer savings of up to 33%, so customers can save when they actually need to restock.
Remember who is on the other side
Bellroy spends much of its lead-up thinking about the customer's state of mind. Is this a gift? Are they "three tabs deep at 11pm trying to get something sorted"? Tyler's view is simple. "November makes everyone's life noisier. We spend a lot of the lead-up working out how to add as little to that as possible."
Kiyana sees the same pressure on customers. "The pressure to constantly buy more doesn't align with how we operate."
The plan is the point
At Compass Studio, we see the discount as the easy bit. Knowing your limits before the market gets loud is what lets a brand stay useful when everyone else turns up the volume. As Kiyana puts it, "one considered annual event feels like enough."
Tyler's measure of success is whether customers "still feel the same way about them in December as they did in October." It's a good test for any brand heading into the next eight weeks.
Planning your sale season? Get in touch at compass-studio.com/contact-us