Black Friday through to Christmas the most important stretch of Desmond & Dempsey’s year. Gifting demand peaks, and so does acquisition: a lot of our gift buyers become repeat customers.

👋 I'm Charlotte, Ecommerce Trading & CRO Manager at Desmond & Dempsey., a luxury sleepwear brand based in the UK. 

In this article, I'll cover how we plan for peak season, how we run Black Friday without heavy discounting and the metrics we watch and the mistakes to avoid.

Why your brand matters most during peak season

Desmond & Dempsey is playful. To pull from our brand bible: 

"It's basically a pyjama brand, but not really about pyjamas. It's about reclaiming rest. Like, everything right now is telling you to optimise your life, be better, do more, be on all the time... and we're kind of like the antidote to that. We make really beautiful, feel-good switching off… Oh, and we're really good in bed [wink]."

I've loved the brand for years, me, it's about bold prints, great quality and making people feel good in what they wear to bed.

I've seen brands lose their personality over peak season. Everything turns into urgency and discounts, and they end up going against what they stand for. For a brand prioritising rest, we're keeping the same tone of voice, the same imagery and the same sense of fun.

How we plan and run thepeak retailseason 

1. Start planning as early as possible 

For us, planning  typically starts around Q2, with a real retro of last year. What sold, what sold out, where we lost sales to stock, and which moments performed.

By summer, we've locked the product range, stock commitments and the campaign narrative. That way, by October we're focused on executing rather than deciding.

2. Pick the moments where intent and stock line up

To choose which moments to focus on,the team looks at three things:

1. Where does the revenue come from? 
2. Where do we have the stock depth? 
3. And most importantly, what feels right for the brand? 

For us, peak starts with early access for loyal customers, then moves into Black Friday and Cyber Monday. After that, the focus shifts to the final shipping dates and the last-minute window before Christmas Eve. Boxing Day closes out the season.

They’re all important. But we put the most energy into the moments where customer intent and our stock position line up. That’s where prior data comes in.

3. Frame offers around gifting, not clearance

We do take part in Black Friday, and the goal is to reward customers and win new ones without damaging margins or relying on discounts.That’s why this year, I'm keen to frame offers around gifting and celebration rather than clearance. We're looking at early access for a select few customers and gift sets with added value.

Across all our channels, our language is warm and specific. Something like "Black Friday gifts", not "EVERYTHING MUST GO!!!!!". Adding to the urgency and noise that comes with Black Friday comms would be off-brand for us.

4. Work from one calendar and one brief

From initial planning to launch, we work from the same calendar. Each team knows what it needs from the others and by when.

Trading and product set the commercial frame: that’s the offer, the margin and the products. That becomes a single brief for everyone else. Marketing turns it into a plan, then the creative team brings it to life with site banners, email, social and landing pages.

Because we all work from the shared plan, every piece says the same thing at the same time.

5. Shoot once for every channel

For a brand where the story is so strong, creative consistency is very important. We plan peak creative months ahead and shoot once for every channel.

That means site, email and social all come from the same world, rather than being patched together week by week.

6. Merchandise the site for gift buyers

My approach is to make the whole site work for someone who's buying for somebody else: easy to find, easy to choose and hard to get wrong. 

That starts with understanding the gift buyer's mindset. They're short on time, and they're worried about getting it wrong, whether that's sizing, delivery or returns. On the site, that means:

• A clear entry point for gifting on the homepage and in the navigation.
• Gift guides organised the way people think, by who they're buying for and by price.
• Gift sets that pair pyjamas with extras like sleep masks or socks. This takes the thinking out of it and lifts average order value.

Product pages matter year round, but especially for gifting. Ours include clear sizing guidance, exchange and returns reassurance, complimentary gift wrapping and message options. We state delivery cut-off dates plainly, so there's no anxiety at checkout.

As Christmas gets closer, the messaging shifts from gift ideas to last orders and gift cards.

7. Launch on a Sunday and watch the right numbers

We always launch new collections and campaigns on a Sunday, because it's the day we're trying to reclaim and rewrite. It's when people are slowing down and scrolling in their pyjamas, so it suits the brand. As a bonus, it gives us a full week of trading to react to what we see.

For events like Black Friday or a promotion - Once we're live, we watch revenue against target, conversion rate, average order value, traffic by channel and paid efficiency. Alongside those, we track email performance and basket abandonment.

The trading team also keeps on top of sell-through by size. A stock problem becomes a revenue problem very quickly.

Mistakes to avoid during peak season

As an avid online shopper, I see the peak from both sides. By Black Friday, my inbox is full of "BIGGEST SALE EVER!!!", I've got twelve texts from brands I barely remember signing up to, and I stop reading any of it. Here are the two mistakes I see most:

• Going off-brand: Black Friday in particular pressures brands to shout the loudest, so they drop everything that made people like them in the first place. The tone changes, the creative goes generic, and they end up looking like every other retailer in the inbox.
• Losing the value of the product: Discount too deeply or too often and you teach people the full price was never real. A great product starts to feel cheap, and customers wait for the next sale. I think customers are becoming more aware of this.

My one piece of advice for growing direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands

Stick to your brand and know what your product is worth. Understand your customer, and how you want them to feel when they open it.

Peak season can be overwhelming. But if you plan around the customer rather than the noise, you protect the value of what you sell. You end up with people who come back in January and beyond. 🙌

Want to hear more?

You can find me on LinkedIn, or treat yourself (or someone else) to something from Desmond & Dempsey.

Keeping all your content in one single source of truth 

Shooting once for every channel only works if your whole team can find the right shot fast. Dash keeps all your product photography, campaign creative and video in one place, with AI search and tags for campaign, season and SKU.

Your marketing, creative and trading teams pull from the same library, so site, email and social stay consistent through peak. You can crop and resize for each channel without waiting on a designer, too.

Brands like Filling Pieces, Passenger and Rixo use Dash to organise visual content and launch products faster. 

Start your free trial of Dash and get your library sorted before the busiest weeks of the year.