Peak has moved: Five ways Australian retailers can build a more agile supply chain

For consumers, the peak retail season may still feel some way off. For Australian supply chains, it has already begun.

The traditional Christmas peak has changed. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become major events in the Australian retail calendar, pulling purchasing forward into November and extending the period over which retailers need to manage elevated demand. In 2025, Australians spent A$82.6 billion online, up 14% year on year, with online purchases accounting for 24% of all retail spending, according to Australia Post.

That means retailers cannot afford to think about peak as simply a December problem. Purchasing, inventory positioning, transportation capacity and fulfilment decisions all need to be considered much earlier.

At the same time, retailers are navigating volatile freight costs, changing trade conditions, geopolitical disruption and uncertain consumer demand. The instinct may be to bring inventory forward, secure transportation capacity and build additional buffers into the network.

The objective is understandable: secure inventory, reduce exposure to disruption and avoid being caught short when demand accelerates. But bringing inventory forward does not remove risk. It moves it elsewhere.

Inventory may spend longer in transit or storage. Working capital is tied up for longer. Warehouse capacity is consumed before demand materialises. And products can end up in the wrong location if customer demand changes during the season.

For Australian retailers, those challenges can be amplified by the country's geography. Imported products may travel significant distances before reaching a distribution centre, while domestic networks must serve customers across widely dispersed population centres. A disruption at one point in the network can therefore have consequences well beyond the original problem.

Peak planning is consequently becoming less about predicting exactly what will happen and more about ensuring the supply chain can respond when plans change. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from execution: the ability to sense change, evaluate options and coordinate action across the supply chain in real time.

Here are five priorities retailers should focus on now.

1. Look beyond the purchase price

Volatile trade conditions have made landed costs both higher and less predictable. Retailers need to look beyond the purchase price and evaluate the full cost of getting products into customers' hands, including duties, freight, fuel, storage, handling and the financial impact of delays.

For Australian retailers, the distance between source and customer makes this particularly important. A transportation decision that looks attractive on a unit-cost basis may create additional inventory, handling or delivery costs elsewhere in the network.

Compliance is also an increasingly important part of the equation. Incorrect tariff classifications, incomplete country-of-origin documentation or missing sourcing information can delay shipments and create additional costs.

As a result, the lowest freight rate is not necessarily the best option. A cheaper shipment may ultimately cost more if it increases the likelihood of delays, compliance issues or disruption. In some circumstances, greater reliability, traceability and certainty can justify a higher transportation cost.

The focus should be on understanding the cost, risk and resilience of the entire product journey, rather than simply the price of moving goods from A to B.

2. Prepare for inventory to arrive before demand

Bringing products into Australia earlier may provide greater certainty, but it also means inventory could remain in the network for longer. That increases carrying costs, ties up working capital and consumes warehouse capacity that may later be needed for faster-moving products. It also creates another risk: inventory can end up in the wrong place if demand shifts during the season.

This matters particularly as Australian consumers increasingly spread their peak purchasing across November and December. Australia Post reported that online spending in November 2024 reached A$7.5 billion, compared with A$7.1 billion in December, illustrating how Black Friday and other promotional events have shifted spending earlier in the traditional Christmas period.

Retailers therefore need a real-time view of inventory across distribution centres, stores and in-transit shipments, together with the ability to reposition stock quickly as conditions change.

That might mean transferring inventory between facilities, fulfilling online orders from stores or reallocating stock before regional shortages emerge. It could also mean changing fulfilment priorities as sales patterns become clearer.

Bringing products into Australia early is only part of the challenge. The real objective is ensuring they are in the right place when customers want them. Rather than moving wholesale from a just-in-time to a just-in-case inventory strategy, retailers need the flexibility to hold the right inventory in the right places, with the agility to reposition it as demand changes.

3. Preserve transportation flexibility

The logistics challenge does not end when goods arrive at a port or distribution centre. Retailers still need to secure the road, rail and other transportation capacity required to move inventory through their networks while remaining prepared for unexpected changes in demand.

Australia's geography makes this flexibility particularly important. Different regions can have very different transportation constraints, while long distances between major population centres can make it harder to respond quickly when inventory is in the wrong place.

Where lead times allow, intermodal transportation can provide an alternative to road freight, while retailers should also identify the products and scenarios that justify expedited shipping.

Air freight, for example, can quickly replenish fast-selling items, but premium transportation costs can rapidly erode margins. Similarly, moving inventory between distribution centres may solve a local availability problem while creating additional costs elsewhere.

Now is the time to model different scenarios. Which products justify expedited transport? Which can tolerate longer lead times? Where can shipments be consolidated? Which alternative carriers, modes and routes are available if disruption occurs? Rather than relying on a single transportation strategy, retailers need the flexibility to adapt as capacity, costs and customer demand evolve.

4. Plan for the forecast to be wrong

Forecasting remains essential, but no model can anticipate every viral trend, successful promotion or sudden shift in consumer confidence. The retailers best prepared for peak season are not necessarily those that assume their forecast will be correct. They are the ones that can detect change quickly and respond before small deviations become expensive problems.

This is especially important as peak demand becomes less concentrated around a single event. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have fundamentally changed the timing of Australian Christmas shopping, with the Australian Bureau of Statistics noting that the growing popularity of Black Friday has altered seasonal retail patterns.

If demand exceeds expectations, can inventory be redirected from another region? Can fulfilment shift to a different distribution centre or store? Is expedited replenishment commercially viable?

And if sales disappoint, can promotions, allocation rules or fulfilment strategies be adjusted quickly without unnecessarily sacrificing margin? This requires more than a better forecast. It requires the ability to act on new information. Competitive advantage increasingly comes from execution: how rapidly retailers can sense change, evaluate their options and act with confidence.

5. Connect decisions across the fulfilment journey

Peak readiness is often viewed primarily as a warehouse challenge. In reality, every customer order depends on coordinated decisions across inventory, order management, warehousing and transportation.

The scale of peak demand makes that coordination critical. Australia Post reported that almost 111 million parcels were delivered across Australia during November and December 2025, up 7.6% on the previous year. The network's busiest day saw more than three million parcels delivered.

Those volumes put pressure on every part of the fulfilment network. A distribution centre may be operating efficiently while the wider network underperforms. Inventory may be sitting in the wrong location. Orders may be routed to facilities with insufficient capacity. A faster delivery promise may require a transportation choice that eliminates the order's profitability.

This is where Intelligent Supply Chain Execution becomes increasingly important. By connecting decisions across the fulfilment journey, retailers can consider inventory availability, warehouse capacity, transportation costs, delivery commitments and profitability together rather than optimising each function independently.

AI can make this coordination even more powerful. Rather than simply providing another dashboard, AI can analyse large volumes of operational data, identify emerging bottlenecks, compare fulfilment scenarios, prioritise inventory movements and recommend transportation decisions in real time. It can also help automate trade documentation, validate compliance information and identify potential issues before they delay shipments.

The goal is not to replace human decision-making. It is to give supply chain teams better intelligence, helping them understand what is changing, what options are available and which actions are most likely to deliver the desired outcome. In other words, AI should take the tedium and complexity out of supply chain execution, allowing people to focus their expertise where it can have the greatest impact.

Australia's peak season is no longer confined to the weeks immediately before Christmas. Black Friday and Cyber Monday have brought forward demand, while the growth of eCommerce has increased the scale and complexity of fulfilment.

Bringing inventory forward can reduce some risks, but it does not eliminate uncertainty. It simply changes where that uncertainty needs to be managed.

The retailers that perform best will not necessarily be those that imported the most inventory or produced the most accurate forecast. They will be those that can continuously rebalance inventory, adapt fulfilment decisions and adjust transportation strategies as conditions evolve.

Peak season is already approaching. The retailers that use the coming weeks to strengthen execution, not simply build inventory, will be best positioned to deliver for customers while protecting margins.