Landed before the month

The order goes in this week or the stock comes by air.

The fasting month is expected around the middle of February, depending on the sighting. Work backwards from that and the calendar turns unforgiving in a way the plan never shows. Sea freight to a Gulf port, then customs, then the warehouse, then the labelling, then the trade wants it a fortnight early, because a gift set that arrives on the third night has missed the week people were buying in.

The plan says the campaign starts next month. The stock decision was due in October.

What happens instead is the default. The lead times in the spreadsheet were typed in some earlier year, and the month moves about eleven days earlier every year, so a template that was comfortable two years ago is now three weeks late. Nobody catches it, because nothing in the template is wrong. It is simply describing a different year.

So the order goes in late. Somebody signs off air freight on boxed dates, which ought to be funny and instead disappears quietly into the landed cost. Or it stays on the water and lands during the month, into a market that has already done its buying, and the evening clothes and the gift sets go into a warehouse to wait a year and lose their moment twice.

Everyone spends this month watching for the sighting, because the sighting decides the first night.

The freight booking made before the year began decided whether there is anything to sell on it.