Two calendars on one desk

Outside my window the city is thinning. Inside the accounts, the customer is buying sandals.

I run a portfolio of British direct-to-consumer brands from a desk in the Gulf, and for most of the year the distance is a matter of time zones. In June it becomes a matter of calendars. The Gulf is entering its quiet months. Britain is entering its best weeks for apparel, with the schools still open, the weather finally warm and a mid-season sale expected any day. Same desk, two summers, and only one of them is real for the customer.

The trouble is that instinct does not read the brief. Years in this region have trained a reflex: when June arrives, hold. Pull the budget in, protect the margin, wait for September. It is the right reflex for a Riyadh account and the wrong one for a customer in Manchester who has just been paid and is looking at the forecast.

A team spread across time zones feels both pulls at once. The people who sit where I sit watch the city thin. The people who sit where the customer sits watch the orders rise. On the Monday call the two halves describe different worlds, and both descriptions are accurate.

What I have learned is that nobody decides which calendar a plan runs on. The default is the calendar outside the window of whoever signs the spend. If the signature sits in the Gulf, the brand starts behaving like a Gulf brand in June, quietly, for no reason the customer will ever see.

So the calendar has to be set on purpose. Written down, pinned to the customer's country, defended against the weather outside.

The seat you sit in sets your calendar unless you set it yourself. The operator's job is to trade on the customer's season. The one outside the window is only weather.