Did Holiday Retail Sales Actually Lift Your Margin?
- Jon Allen
- Dec 4
- 3 min read
The headlines will tell you this holiday season was a win.
The National Retail Federation (NRF) expects 2025 holiday retail sales in November and December to cross the $1 trillion mark for the first time, up about 3.7%–4.2% over last year. And 2024 already set a record, with core holiday sales hitting roughly $994.1 billion, up 4% year over year.
That’s great for headlines. But here’s the question that matters for you as a supplier:
Did holiday retail sales actually lift your margin?
Top line vs. bottom line: two very different stories
For many brands, Q4 looks amazing on the surface:
Shipments spike
Point-of-sale (POS) data jumps
Retailers expand features and displays
But when you stack everything underneath those sales—trade spend, temporary price reductions, co-op advertising, chargebacks, damages, and post-audit deductions—the story can flip quickly.
A fictional example: Sunny Hollow Snacks
Sunny Hollow sells a $4.99 snack bag into a national mass retailer. Baseline weekly volume: 5,000 units Holiday promo: $3.99 feature price + endcap, funded with an extra 20% trade spend
On paper, units jump 80% for the event. The team celebrates. Then, in January:
A chunk of the lift was forward buy, and January volume crashes
The retailer takes compliance deductions tied to late trucks
The promotional billback hits at a higher rate than planned
Once finance finishes the math, the “big win” looks like a low-margin break-even.
A simple holiday margin checkup
You don’t need a full data science team to do this. Grab finance, sales, and your broker or agency, and walk through three basic steps on your top 5–10 items.
Compare baseline vs. holiday performance
What was your average weekly shipment/POS for August–September?
What was it during November–December?
How much of that lift can you credibly tie to pricing, features, or displays?
Layer in the full cost of doing business Include:
Trade spend and promotional allowances
Co-op advertising and display fees
Incremental freight, accessorials, and rush charges
Compliance penalties and other chargebacks
Look at recovery and leakage
How many deductions were disputed?
How many were reversed?
Did returns and defectives spike after the event?
If your gross margin percent looks okay but your net margin is sagging once deductions are included, that’s your signal to tighten the playbook before next year’s holiday push.
Questions to ask your team in December
Which holiday promotions actually improved net margin—and which just drove volume?
Did any retailer “wins” quietly become losses once you added in chargebacks and returns?
Where did we see the most deduction noise: price, freight, compliance, or post-audit?
What will we stop doing next year based on this holiday’s results?
These are the same questions retail buyers are asking when they sit down to plan 2026.
They’re not just looking at volume; they’re looking at reliability, profitability, and friction.
Where a broker partner fits in
A seasoned consumer packaged goods (CPG) broker or retail partner can help you:
Connect the dots between promotions and deduction patterns
Translate messy year-end data into a clear story for buyer meetings
Compare your holiday performance to what they’re seeing across categories
At Woodridge Retail Group, we spend a lot of time helping suppliers read that story—the good, the bad, and the fixable—so they walk into the new year with a smarter playbook, not just a higher invoice count.
Before you lock in next year’s promotional calendar, take an afternoon to run a holiday margin checkup on your top items.
