"We're a UK sports brand doing about £1.5m a year. Gymwear, footwear, a couple of equipment lines. Every Q4 we make the same two mistakes: we run out of the core sizes in November when the ads are working, and we finish January looking at a warehouse full of XS and XXL. How should we actually plan the Q4 buy this time?"
Plan the buy as two decisions, not one. The quantity comes from a demand model built by month, channel and size, not from a single "we need £400k of stock" number. The timing comes from the shipping calendar, which decides what is even possible before the season ends. Do both in the right order and the plan mostly writes itself. Get the mix and the timing right and the season stops being a scramble: your best sizes stay in stock through the weeks that decide the year, and your cash stops hiding in a warehouse full of XS.
Everything here is an illustrative example with synthetic planning numbers, not any client's books. Steal the method, then swap in your own data.
Here's the Short Version
- Split the remaining buy into two decisions: confirm what is already in production or ready to ship, then make a mid-November top-up call only where finished stock or a fast replenishment slot is actually reserved
- Sea freight from China to the UK runs 30 to 40 days port to port, with another one to two weeks for clearance and delivery. Finished goods that sail in October reach the warehouse from mid-November into the second half of December. A new production order placed in mid-October arrives from the second half of December into January, so it is not a Black Friday sea order. Air freight covers the gap on your best sellers only, at several times the sea cost per unit
- Buy the size curve, not the average. Core sizes typically carry the majority of demand, and a flat curve overbuys tails and starves the middle. On the illustrative example, the tails end up discounted and the cores sell out early
- Sports specifics make this worse than other categories: footwear half sizes, compression fits that read small, and teamwear that arrives in blocks. Model each line on its own trailing data, not on a blended rate
- The season has fixed dates you cannot move: Black Friday is 27 November this year, and the factories in China wind down from late January for Chinese New Year on 6 February 2027, with full capacity not returning until early March. Your Q1 order decision is a November decision
- Duty rates on the stock you import vary enormously by product: sports apparel commonly attracts around 12%, sports footwear around 16%, and some fitness equipment as little as 2%. Duty and freight are part of landed cost, and they change the sell-through maths, not just the cash flow
- Watch three numbers weekly through Q4: sell-through percentage by size, weeks of cover by line, and full-price sell-through. They tell you when to top up, what to mark down, and when to stop spending
Why The Q4 Plan Fails Before October
Every year I see the same pattern. The founder builds one number, "we need about £400k of stock for Q4", places one order, and then watches reality arrive in the wrong shape: out of stock in M and L in late November, overstocked in the extremes in February. The plan was not wrong about the total. It was wrong about the mix and the timing, and those are the two things you control.
The mix is a size curve question, and in sports it is sharper than in most categories. Gymwear sells middle-heavy because people buy their true size. Footwear sells in clusters around half sizes, and the widest point of the cluster moves by model. Compression and technical kit can have a different return profile because fit is hard to judge online; use your own return rate by line and size rather than assuming a fixed multiple. And teamwear has its own rhythm: clubs and gyms order in blocks, late, and then again after Christmas.
The timing is a shipping calendar question. Stock you want on a shelf has to exist in a factory, cross an ocean, clear customs and reach your 3PL before the demand arrives. Miss any of those and you spend the season watching ad spend chase products you do not have.
The Dates That Decide The Season
Start with the shipping reality, because it filters every other decision. A production run commonly takes four to six weeks once specs are approved. Sea freight from China to the UK runs 30 to 40 days on the water, plus a week or two for customs clearance and delivery to your warehouse. Put the chain together and a new production order placed on 15 October reaches your warehouse between about 19 December and 19 January, before allowing for missed sailings or delays. Black Friday is 27 November 2026. If finished stock is not already sailing, it is not a Black Friday sea order.
That leaves one honest lever for the gap, with a condition attached: air freight moves finished goods faster, it does not shorten production. Air moves in roughly one to two weeks door-to-door and costs several times sea per unit, so it only works for hero lines where finished stock is reserved or a short replenishment run has already been agreed. Air forty pairs of your fastest shoe in the two sizes the market actually wants, not a container of maybes.
| Decision | The date that drives it | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Sea arrival for Q4 | Finished goods sailing by late September or very early October | A mid-October sailing is already too late once UK clearance and delivery are added; a new production order placed now lands late December into January |
| Air freight top-up | Decide by early November | One to two weeks door to door, but only if finished stock is reserved or a short replenishment run is agreed |
| Q1 production run | Place by late November (order ships before the holiday shutdown) | Factories wind down from late January for Chinese New Year on 6 February 2027 and run at full capacity again from early March |
| Duty deferment cut-off | 16th of the following month | Import duty on a deferment account clears roughly a month after import; size the limit for peak |
| VAT on the December quarter | Early February (one month plus seven days after quarter end) | The amount payable is output VAT less recoverable input VAT, so the biggest sales quarter does not always produce the biggest net bill; either way it lands after the stock has been paid for |
Two customs mechanics buy you time in that table. Postponed VAT accounting, which needs no prior approval, keeps import VAT off the cash flow by letting you declare and recover it on the same return, provided you instruct your customs agent in writing. A duty deferment account lets you pay duty and any import VAT not on PVA on the 16th of the following month instead of at the border, which HMRC describes as an average of about 30 days of credit.
The Size Curve: Where Sports Inventory Dies
Here is the discipline that separates the brands that clear Q4 from the ones that discount it. Do not buy 1,000 units in a flat spread of XS, S, M, L and XL and above at 200 each. Buy the curve your sales history proves. Most sports lines follow a middle-heavy shape: the two core sizes carry the majority of units, the middle sizes most of the rest, and the tails are a small fraction that still needs stocking because a customer who cannot find their size does not wait, they leave.
Illustrative example for a 1,000 unit buy of a training tee, based on a typical trailing pattern:
| Size | Flat buy | Curve buy | What happens at the end of season |
|---|---|---|---|
| XS | 200 | 60 | Flat: discounted in January. Curve: sold through at full price |
| S | 200 | 170 | Flat: discount territory. Curve: mostly full price |
| M | 200 | 340 | Flat: sells out early, lost sales. Curve: covered to the end |
| L | 200 | 320 | Flat: same lost sales problem. Curve: covered |
| XL and above | 200 (split) | 110 (split) | Flat: carryover stock. Curve: mostly cleared |
The flat buy puts 600 units into XS, S and the XL-plus band, where demand is closer to 340 for the season, and only 400 into M and L, which together sell about 660. That is how a brand runs out of its best sellers while it discounts the rest. The curve buy relocates the same spend to where the demand actually is. On margin, the difference is the gap between full-price sell-through and January markdown, and at scale it is not small: if a tenth of an illustrative £450,000 Q4 buy sits in the wrong sizes, that is £45,000 of your cash wearing the wrong label while the middle of the curve stocks out. Run it on your own numbers and the size mix decision usually beats the supplier price negotiation for the same effort.
Two refinements. First, split the curve by channel only where your own sales and returns data show a different buyer or fit pattern. Second, for footwear, model by half size and let your returns data edit the curve: if the 8.5 and 9 return at 30% and the 10 converts, the next buy reflects that, not the supplier's standard ratio.
The Plan In Three Layers
Layer one: the baseline. Take your last twelve months by line, split by month, and lift out the Q4 shape. For most sports brands the last eight weeks of the year and the first two weeks of January carry an outsized share of demand, so a fourth of the year's stock can be needed in under a fifth of the year. That shape is your plan's skeleton. If you do not have twelve months of your own data, start the discipline now and treat this year as the year you build it.
Layer two: the scenarios. Build three versions of Q4: base, strong and soft, each with a different reorder trigger. The point is not to predict the quarter, it is to decide now what you do in each version. The top-up in mid-November is where the scenario becomes a decision: if sell-through is tracking ahead of base, commit the air freight; if it is behind, hold stock back and protect cash.
Layer three: the buffer, sized by consequence. Buffer the lines where a stockout costs you a customer for good (footwear first purchase, teamwear kit), and thin the buffer on the lines where the loss is just a sale this week. A stockout on a hero shoe in November can cost you the January repeat order as well. A stockout on a novelty accessory costs you one sale.
Then wire the whole thing into cash. On an illustrative £1.5m brand, Q4 might represent around 40% of the year, so something like £450,000 of stock at landed cost goes out of the door in October and November, against supplier terms that commonly run 30% on order and 70% before shipment. The peak funding need arrives well before the peak selling does, and the December VAT bill lands in early February, after the season. If the gap between the two needs a facility, match its length to the life of the stock, not to your ambition: we walked through the ladder in our post on funding a Q4 stock build, and the mechanics are identical for sports.
The Three Numbers To Watch Weekly
Sell-through by size. Cumulative net units sold divided by units received for the same line and size, updated weekly. Read it against the planned sales curve, remaining stock, inbound stock and replenishment lead time. A core size tracking ahead of plan is the signal that justifies a top-up, not the percentage on its own.
Weeks of cover by line. Current stock divided by the average weekly sales rate at your current run rate. Set cover by line from forecast demand, replenishment lead time, safety stock and the weeks left in the season; six to ten weeks can be a planning reference for core lines, not a universal healthy range. Cover is how you spot the overbuy early enough to act, rather than in January when the only tool left is a discount.
Full-price sell-through. Cumulative net units sold at the original ticket price divided by units received for the same cohort, tracked separately from total sell-through. Compare it with the category plan and the same point in prior seasons; the percentage alone does not prove the buy beat or missed plan. The share of sold units that went at full price is the full-price sales mix, which is a different number, and worth tracking too.
What To Do This Month
- Pull trailing sales by line, channel and size, and write the Q4 curve for your top twenty lines. Start with the top twenty, then check what share of seasonal sales they actually cover
- Confirm what is already finished, in production or booked today. Treat a new production order placed now as a late December or January sea arrival
- Ring-fence air freight for the five to ten hero sizes you would bet the season on, and set the trigger that releases it from the planned curve, remaining stock, inbound units, margin and confirmed replenishment time; 70% sell-through on a date is only an example, not a rule on its own
- Decide the Chinese New Year order now. Factories wind down from late January and run properly again in March, so the Q1 buy you need on the shelf in spring has to be placed before the shutdown; confirm your factory's own closure and booking dates, and note the deposit lands in the same window as your Q4 bills
- Lock the customs mechanics before the first container: postponed VAT accounting instructed in writing, and a duty deferment limit sized for peak imports, not the January run rate
- Build the mid-November review into the calendar, with the three numbers above on one page. That meeting is the whole plan: top up, hold, or mark down
FAQ
How much stock should a sports brand buy for Q4?
Start from last year's Q4 share of the year, applied to this year's plan, then split it by line, channel and size curve rather than buying one aggregate number. On the illustrative example, a £1.5m brand needed around £450,000 of Q4 stock at landed cost, funded across two supplier payments before the season begins. Build a base, strong and soft version, and decide your top-up trigger before the season, not during it.
When should I place my Q4 stock order?
For Black Friday arrivals, months earlier than most brands expect. Production takes four to six weeks before sea freight starts. Sea freight then takes 30 to 40 days port to port, plus clearance and delivery. On those assumptions, a new order placed on 15 October reaches the warehouse from about 19 December to 19 January, and only finished goods already sailing could arrive earlier.
How do I stop running out of core sizes every year?
Buy the size curve your sales history proves, not a flat spread. Core sizes typically carry most of the demand, and a flat buy starves them while it overbuys the tails. Build the curve by line and channel, let returns data edit the footwear curve, and watch sell-through by size weekly so the mid-season top-up goes to the sizes that are actually moving.
The Bottom Line
Q4 planning is a mix decision and a calendar decision. Buy the curve, not the average. Confirm what is already finished or booked, reserve air capacity or a replenishment slot for heroes before you need it, and work backwards from Black Friday on 27 November and Chinese New Year on 6 February 2027, because those two dates decide what is even possible. If you and your team use the P&L structure and the sell-through discipline together, the buy stops being a guess and becomes the plan. Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, and a warehouse full of the wrong sizes is neither.
If you want your Q4 buy, size curve and cash timeline built properly before the season closes, that is the work we do for UK sports brands between £1m and £20m. We are specialist social commerce accountants, we look at stock plans and settlement data every week, and we will tell you plainly what to buy and what to skip. Book a call and bring your last twelve months of sales by size and channel.