The holiday season is almost here, and most retailers have already secured much of their seasonal inventory. But stock on hand isn’t the same as readiness. Tariff volatility, shifting consumer behavior, and rising costs are reshaping supply chains week by week.
To unpack these dynamics, I joined industry experts for a session at A Look at 2025’s Holiday Shopping Season, a virtual event presented by Retail Dive, Supply Chain Dive, and Marketing Dive. One thing stood out: To succeed this upcoming holiday season, retailers will need flexible sourcing, smart forecasting and the precision to redistribute stock exactly where it's needed, when it's needed.
Video courtesy of Supply Chain Dive
1. Diversified sourcing strategies: Build flexibility into the first mile
Retailers with diversified sourcing strategies are best positioned to meet demand. Those relying heavily on single-source imports, especially specialty and seasonal retailers, face the highest risk of shortages if a disruption occurs.
This year’s trade environment makes diversification especially critical. More than 700 new product categories were recently added to steel and aluminum tariffs, furniture is under review for additional duties, and the early end of the de minimis exemption for packages under $800 is already affecting four million packages daily, particularly in e-commerce.
To mitigate risk, retailers should spread sourcing across multiple regions, ensuring that new duties, port delays, or geopolitical tensions in one location don’t derail holiday plans. Many have already frontloaded shipments and diversified suppliers to balance timing and cost, while using flexible storage agreements and shared warehouse space to manage the additional volumes. Others are leveraging duty-deferral and cost-avoidance options, such as Foreign Trade Zones or taking advantage of USMCA’s free trade provisions to strengthen their sourcing plans.
By combining these approaches, retailers can create a sourcing hierarchy that cushions against sudden shocks and gives retailers room to maneuver when market conditions shift. To support these strategies, C.H. Robinson offers solutions like our U.S. Tariff Impact Analysis tool and ACE Import Intelligence, which help identify cost exposures, plan scenarios, and streamline customs compliance—turning complex trade rules into actionable insights.
2. Strong forecasting: Turn real-time data into quick action
Predicting holiday demand has rarely been more complex. Consumer spending has stayed relatively stable overall, but habits are changing: lower-income shoppers are cutting back and middle-income households are trading down. A July surge in preemptive buying suggests a potential slowdown as well-stocked households delay typical purchases.
In this environment, real-time data and predictive analytics are essential. Retailers are increasingly integrating point-of-sale data, promotional calendars, and economic indicators into rolling forecasts, allowing them to fine-tune order sizes and timing. Close coordination with suppliers ensures that production and shipping schedules can adjust quickly as demand signals shift. Many retailers are now pairing these predictive tools with solutions powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that can identify patterns and recommend actions faster than traditional methods.
To deepen these insights, retailers are also integrating advanced sourcing and customs analytics. Our U.S. Customs Analytics tool gives near real-time visibility into product flows, allowing planners to adjust inbound shipments and order timing while our U.S. Sourcing Analysis tool models alternative supply scenarios and benchmarks sourcing strategies, helping teams quickly redirect purchasing and build contingency plans as demand or market conditions shift.
This precision helps balance the need for stock certainty with the risk of overbuying—critical when tariffs and price sensitivity mean excess inventory can erode margins. Combining forecasting with dynamic distribution strategies, such as moving products between regional facilities as sell-through changes, further protects against demand swings.
3. Omni-channel distribution networks: Meet consumers where they are
Even with ample inventory, agile fulfillment and delivery remains decisive. Retailers investing in omni-channel distribution networks and better visibility technology are best prepared to meet consumers wherever they choose to shop.
By pushing inventory closer to consumers through regional distribution centers, retailers reduce delivery times and secure transportation capacity before peak season. Some are even using flexible warehousing contracts to adjust space quickly and aligning tightly with logistics partners to anticipate bottlenecks.
Increasingly, item-level visibility—including centralized purchase-order management—is a key enabler of this approach. With SKU-level insight, retailers can avoid over-ordering where stock isn’t needed, redistribute existing inventory to higher-demand locations, and place precise replenishment orders only when and where they’re required. This same visibility supports optimized in-network movement, such as shuttle services between distribution nodes or “milk runs” that service multiple stops along a single route, lowering transportation costs while maintaining responsiveness.
Integrating these visibility and movement strategies across stores, e-commerce, and third-party locations ensures inventory can be reallocated in real time as demand patterns shift—so goods arrive on the right shelf or doorstep exactly when customers need them.
The bottom line
Frontloading has given retailers a strong starting point for the holidays, but resilience will define success. By diversifying sourcing to manage tariff risk, strengthening forecasting with predictive analytics and real-time data, and building omni-channel networks that keep products close to customers, retailers can navigate the volatility of the 2025 holiday season and set the stage for a more adaptable supply chain in the year ahead.
To unlock even more insights, watch the full virtual event on-demand.
