Planning the Second Half of the Year

Q: Considering this is retail comeback year, how should I plan my sales for Q3 and Q4—higher than usual or flat?

A: You’ll want to plan your sales based on when you started recovering from the fall-off in 2008. A year after the initial slowdown, we know that business began to pickup. In the first season of the recovery, sales were up about 5%, and in the second season they were up 20%. For the third season of recovery (the second-half of this year) we expect sales to be up 12% because we’re starting to go against last year’s increases. So, it’s best to determine where you are in the recovery cycle when you begin to plan sales for the later half of this year.

Date answered: 06/10/2010
Question raised by: Malcolm