The aisle changes hands

In Egypt the entrance display is sold by the month, and the month is not what arrives.

I have bought that space. You agree it in December, you pay for the best four square metres in the store for thirty days, and you fill it with what the month eats after sunset: dates, juice, dried fruit, the sharing pack that exists for this season and no other.

Then somewhere around the middle of the month you walk into a branch and the display is not yours.

Nothing was broken. The store has been reset for Eid, expected around the twentieth this year depending on the sighting. The dates have gone to a shelf near the back, and the entrance now holds chocolate boxes, wrapped tins, biscuits with a ribbon, the things a person carries into a house they are visiting. Nobody called to say so, because in the retailer's calendar nothing unusual happened.

From the other side of that desk it is plain. The category manager is running two demand curves through one aisle. The first is consumption, which peaks in the middle weeks. The second is gifting, which starts the moment people can see the holiday coming and pays more per square metre than dates ever will. Given both in one space he takes the second, and without a conversation, because the agreement he signed said the month.

So the retailer sold thirty days and delivered two fortnights. The second fortnight belongs to whoever sells Eid.

The shelf was never the scarce thing. What is scarce is the four days in front of a holiday, and a trade agreement that names a month instead of naming the reset date has bought half of what it thinks it has.