For many people, the holiday season—which, in the US, begins on Thanksgiving and goes to the end of the year—is a time to relax, unwind, and take a break from the daily grind of work.
But, for retailers, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year. Consumers spent a record $257.8 billion on US ecommerce sites during the holiday season in 2025, up 6.8% from the previous year.
To satisfy demand during the holiday season—which typically surges the five days from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, when ~40% of gift spending happens—ecommerce companies must be able to ensure:
- Product availability: If online retailers don’t have the products that shoppers are looking for in stock during the holidays, they are likely to see a loss in customer trust and loyalty, along with a corresponding drop in sales.
- Fast, reliable shipping: It’s imperative that ecommerce companies deliver products on time, ahead of the end-of-year holidays. Delivery delays are a top concern for online shoppers, with more than half of respondents to a recent survey by Narvar reporting that estimated delivery dates influence where they shop online during the holiday season.
So, how can online retailers, like you, ensure your products are in stock and your customer orders are delivered on time during the busy holiday shopping season?
It comes down to how well you manage end-to-end logistics operations—from upstream inventory management to order fulfillment—and deal with supply chain challenges and constraints during the end-of-year peak sales period.
To help handle logistics operations during the high-volume, high-stress holiday season and meet high customer expectations, many companies engage third-party logistics (3PL) providers to deliver ecommerce fulfillment services.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps you need to take with your 3PL to make sure your ecommerce business is prepared to satisfy demand and deliver on time for your customers during the busy holiday season.
As the old adage goes, “Failing to plan is planning to fail,” and this especially holds true for ecommerce companies during the holiday shopping season.
To set your ecommerce business up for success during the peak season, start your sales planning process (as well as your planning for other areas, including manufacturing and website optimization) as early as possible.
Ideally, you would have a sales plan in place two to three months before the onset of peak shopping season, which falls on Thanksgiving Day, always the fourth Thursday in November.
When creating a sales plan, you will want to:
- Take a close look at your historical data and demand forecasts, analyzing past sales trends and future projections. Identify which products – such as top sellers or hot new items – you would like to feature in your holiday season sales campaigns.
- Work with your internal team and other supply chain stakeholders (including manufacturers and 3PL partners) to determine:
- Which products you plan to sell during the holiday season.
- Which deals and promotions you plan to offer on those products.
- Which channels – including your own brand website, other ecommerce marketplaces, social media shopping sites, and even brick-and-mortar stores – you plan to sell those products through and if you will have exclusive offers on any of those channels.
- How much inventory of those products you will need to satisfy forecasted demand across all your sales channels.
- How much inventory of those products you already have in stock and how much will need to be manufactured (by you or your manufacturing partners).
- Generate a holiday season sales plan, which details which products you will sell, which promotions and deals your will run across various sales channels, and where you will source the inventory you need to meet high demand from holiday shoppers.
As mentioned above, it may be a good idea to give your 3PL partner a seat at the table during your holiday sales planning discussions. Some 3PL services—like Amazon Multichannel Fulfillment (MCF)—can provide expert insights on inventory management, order fulfillment, and supply chain management that can really help you crystallize your sales plan. And because MCF is part of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), Amazon’s end-to-end supply chain solution, you also get access to other supply chain services that your business might need, like ground freight, warehousing & distribution, and more.
Before taking the next step, creating the inbounding plan, check with your 3PL regarding a few potential issues:
-
Capacity
Make sure your 3PL has enough capacity to handle the volume of orders that you expect during the holiday season. If your 3PL can’t inbound, store, pick, pack, and ship your products, you may need to look for other 3PL partners to help handle your holiday ecommerce fulfillment. Be aware that some 3PLs may charge you for the cost of hiring additional staff required to handle your holiday season orders. -
Surcharges
Find out which surcharges your 3PL imposes. Some have a surcharge for order fulfillment and other services rendered during the peak period, along with other fees, including zonal and fuel surcharges. It’s important to get a grasp of the true cost of your order fulfillment during the holidays, as this will enable you to budget appropriately. -
Global presence
Ensure that your 3PL provider has a footprint in those locations where your customer base is located. For example, when you engage Amazon as your 3PL, you get access to Amazon’s fulfillment services and its world-class logistics network, which stretches across 27 countries and has over 2,000 facilities (including more than 200 US fulfillment centers) as well as 100,000 trailers, containers, and aircraft. -
Integrations
Make sure that your 3PL has integrations with the various sales channels that you’re using. ASCS’ multichannel fulfillment service offers over 100 different integration options, from “Built by Amazon” apps to inventory and order management solutions to custom APIs, which can automate the entire order fulfillment process. -
Cutoff date
During the holiday season, most 3PLs implement cutoff dates, after which they can’t accept new inventory shipments. Make sure your inventory is inbounded to your 3PL well before their cutoff date, so it’s ready to ship out to customers once holiday shopping commences.
Once you’ve checked with your 3PL about these and other important issues, you can start creating your inbounding plan. Its goal is to ensure that you send the right amount of the right products to your 3PL at the right times. With an inbounding plan, your 3PL can efficiently pick, pack, and ship your products out to customers during the holiday season.
The inbounding plan that you create with your 3PL should stipulate:
- Which SKUs, in which quantities, will you send to your 3PL
- When will you send those shipments to your 3PL
- To which of your 3PL’s facilities, such as upstream distribution centers or fulfillment centers, will you send the shipments
- To which channels do you want to allocate your SKUs
- The optimal inventory levels of various SKUs that you would like to maintain across your 3PL’s storage and distribution network, so you can replenish whenever necessary
For example, with Amazon Supply Chain Services as your 3PL provider, you only need to manage a single pool of inventory that can be used to fulfill orders across channels, allowing for better inventory control and reducing stockouts.
After you’ve created your sales and inbounding plans, you can start sending your inventory to your 3PL (according to the schedule laid out in your inbounding plan).
Communicating and collaborating very closely with your 3PL to ensure that the inbounding process goes smoothly is critical. And don’t forget to inbound all your inventory to your 3PL’s facilities as early as possible—and well ahead of your 3PL’s cutoff date.
Once your stock has been received by your 3PL and is safely stored on the shelves of their warehousing facilities, you are essentially prepared—at least, on the ecommerce fulfillment front—to handle the spike in orders from holiday shoppers.
That’s the value of working with a 3PL provider: You can let them worry about handling the picking, packing, and shipping of your orders during the holiday season spike, while you focus on your sales, marketing, and overall business development.
Before the holiday shopping season officially kicks off, you should optimize your website and ensure all of your deals and promotions are up and running across your sales channels.
And then—if you’ve done your sales and inbounding planning correctly and have distributed the right products across your 3PL’s fulfillment center network—you can sit back and watch the holiday orders flow in, and your shipments go out.
Your 3PL should take care of all the heavy lifting as far as logistics are concerned, but you’ll want to maintain visibility over your operations in case of the following issues:
- Your inventory levels run low over the course of the holiday season, and you need to replenish. If that happens, coordinate with your 3PL to see if you can redistribute your stock or pull from your buffer or back-up inventory. Some 3PLs offer low-cost bulk upstream storage in distribution centers, so that your inventory will be automatically replenished in fulfillment centers whenever necessary.
- Problems with customer orders that may arise. Most 3PLs offer customer service and support, and they should have representatives working around the clock during peak season to assist you with any order fulfillment issues. And, if any customers want to return or exchange the holiday gifts they received, your 3PL provider may also be able to help you with reverse logistics.
If you follow the holiday ecommerce fulfillment steps outlined in this guide, you can set your ecommerce business up for success during the end-of-year peak period.
By ensuring product availability and on-time delivery across your various sales channels throughout the holidays, your 3PL provider can help you bring big smiles to the faces of your customers.
And, by managing your order fulfillment operations and eliminating logistics headaches, your 3PL can probably help you relax and enjoy yourself a whole lot more during the busy holiday season.
