The Inventory & Production Capacity Audit: What to Check Before Holiday Demand Hits

Avoid holiday season stockouts and missed deadlines. Run this Inventory & Production Capacity Audit now to know your real limits before demand hits.

9/8/20261 min read

Every year it's the same story. A seller gets a burst of holiday traffic, orders start coming in, and by week two of December they're either out of materials, out of time, or both. The demand wasn't the problem, the ack of a plan for it was.

September is when you find out what you can actually handle before the pressure is on to figure it out live.

Here's the audit.

1. What's your real production ceiling?

The number backed by your actual hours, not the number you wish were true. If you have 10 hours a week for making, and each item takes 2 hours, you can produce 5 items a week between now and your last shipping date. Count backward from there.

2. What's your last safe shipping date?

Work back from the date an order has to ship to arrive before the holiday. That date is your real deadline, not December 24th. Everything you plan should be built around it.

3. What materials do you need, and what's the lead time to get them?

If a supplier takes 3 weeks to restock and you wait until you're low to reorder, you've built a gap into your own production schedule. List your core materials and their actual restock times now.

4. Which products are worth the capacity they take?

Not every item deserves a slot in a limited production window. Look at what sold last holiday season, what took the longest to make, and what actually moved. Capacity is finite. Spend it on what earns it.

5. What's your plan when you hit capacity?

Waitlist. Early cutoff date. Pre-order window. Whatever it is, decide now, not in a panic when orders outpace what you can make.

Your holiday prep is about knowing your limits early enough to work inside them instead of getting surprised by them in December.

If you haven't run this audit yet, now is the month. October is for execution, September is for knowing what you're actually capable of executing.

Keary Marketing helps established handmade sellers build revenue independence, one owned asset at a time.

rk@kearymarketing.com