Is Your Supply Chain Ready for Peak Season? Five Questions Every Brand Should Ask

Faith Artieda • August 27, 2026

Peak season has a way of arriving slowly, and then all at once. One minute, teams are finalizing promotions and reviewing forecasts; the next, order volumes are climbing, inventory is moving faster, and customers are expecting their purchases to arrive without a hitch.

For brands, September is an important point in that transition. There is still time to prepare, but the decisions being made now can influence how smoothly the busiest months of the year unfold. Peak season tends to magnify what is already happening within a supply chain.

Processes that work comfortably during an average week may feel very different under holiday volume, while small gaps in communication, capacity, or planning can quickly become much harder to manage.

Being ready, then, isn't simply about having enough inventory in the warehouse. It's about understanding how your entire fulfillment operation will respond when there's more pressure on it and having the right conversations before that pressure arrives.

Here are five questions worth asking while there's still time to act on the answers.

1. How Well Do You Really Understand the Demand Ahead?

No forecast can predict exactly what customers will do, especially during a season shaped by promotions, changing buying habits, and unexpected spikes in demand. But there's an enormous difference between entering peak season without certainty and entering it without a plan.

Historical order patterns are a good place to begin, but they shouldn't be the only consideration. Upcoming promotions, new product launches, retail commitments, marketing campaigns, inventory arrivals, and anticipated changes in order profiles can all influence what your fulfillment operation will need to handle.

More importantly, that information needs to make its way beyond your internal planning meetings.

Your 3PL can't prepare for a promotion it doesn't know about, just as it can't anticipate a sudden change in order volume without visibility into what's ahead. The earlier those conversations happen, the more opportunity there is to think through labor, space, inventory positioning, and potential contingencies together.

Barrett's Vice President of Customer Solutions, Scott Wilkins, spoke about the value of understanding the bigger picture during a recent Inside Barrett conversation:

“The more you are able to uncover from what their pain points are, what direction they want to go, what their business plan looks like, not only leads to a better solution, but it leads to more cost certainty.”

Peak planning is really an extension of that philosophy. The more both sides understand about what's coming, the better prepared they can be for it.

2. Can Your Operation Absorb More Volume Without Losing What Customers Value?

Handling more orders is only one measure of peak-season readiness. The more meaningful question is whether your operation can absorb that additional volume while maintaining the experience your customers have come to expect.

A fulfillment process may run beautifully under normal conditions, but peak season puts every part of it under greater strain. More inventory is moving through the building, more orders are entering the system, labor requirements shift, carrier schedules tighten, and there is less room for small inefficiencies to hide.

That's why capacity conversations should go beyond, “How many orders can we ship?”

Can you maintain accuracy at that volume?

That question isn't meant to create anxiety around peak season. It's meant to uncover vulnerabilities while there's still time to strengthen them.

3. Are You Talking to Your 3PL Enough?

Some of the most productive peak season planning doesn't happen in a spreadsheet. It happens in conversations.

Your logistics partner should know what's changing within your business, just as you should understand what's happening within your fulfillment operation. Forecasts will change. Promotions will evolve. Inventory may arrive earlier or later than anticipated. None of that is unusual; the challenge comes when those changes aren't communicated until they become urgent.

Mark Healy spoke about this during his appearance on The New Warehouse Podcast, emphasizing that peak planning shouldn't suddenly begin when the holiday rush is already approaching:

“If we're doing a good job, we should be doing this year-round. Peak is peak, but we shouldn't just be popping our heads up.”

That perspective takes some of the drama out of peak season. When customers and their 3PL are already accustomed to sharing forecasts, discussing changes, reviewing performance, and planning ahead together, the busiest months don't require an entirely new relationship. They're simply a more demanding period within an established one.

And when something unexpected inevitably happens, both teams already know how to communicate and solve it together.

4. Have You Thought About What Happens After the Order Leaves the Shelf?

Peak season conversations naturally revolve around volume, labor, and shipping deadlines, but customers experience something much more personal.

They experience their order.

For someone purchasing a holiday gift, the package arriving at their door may be the only physical interaction they ever have with your brand. How it arrives, how it's packaged, whether the right item is inside, and how easy it is to return all contribute to the impression that customer carries forward.

For brands that incorporate personalization, gift messaging, branded inserts, special packaging, or kitting into the experience, those details can become even more meaningful during the holidays. They also introduce additional operational considerations that need to be planned for before volumes accelerate.

Peak season success shouldn't be defined solely by how many packages leave the warehouse. It should also be measured by whether the experience inside those packages still feels like your brand.

5. Is Your 3PL Preparing With You or Simply Waiting for the Volume?

Perhaps the most revealing peak-season question isn't about inventory, labor, or forecasts. It's about the relationship you have with the people responsible for helping you manage all three.

A strong logistics partner shouldn't disappear between operational reviews and reappear when something goes wrong. They should be paying attention to where your business is headed, asking questions about what's changing, and helping identify challenges before they reach your customers.

Mark described that responsibility particularly well when he said:

“We should be in a position as the professionals to look around corners for our customers.”

That's an important distinction during peak season. There will always be circumstances no one can predict, but proactive planning creates more room to respond when they happen. A 3PL that understands your business can help you think through those possibilities before they become emergencies, rather than simply reacting once the pressure is already there.

The best partnerships make peak season feel less like your problem and their problem and more like a challenge everyone is prepared to navigate together.

Peak Season Readiness Starts Before Peak Season

There will always be an element of unpredictability in logistics, and perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than during the busiest months of the year. A promotion may outperform expectations, consumer demand may shift, or an unforeseen disruption may require everyone to adjust quickly.

Being prepared doesn't mean eliminating every surprise. It means creating an operation, and a partnership, that can respond when surprises happen.

That's why the conversations taking place in September matter. This is the opportunity to look closely at forecasts, question assumptions, address potential constraints, and make sure everyone understands what's ahead. It may not be the most visible part of peak season, but it's often the work that determines how everything else unfolds.

At Barrett, we believe the strongest peak seasons are built through preparation long before the busiest orders begin arriving.

When customers and their logistics teams communicate openly, plan thoughtfully, and trust one another enough to have difficult conversations early, there's less time spent reacting when the pressure rises—and more time focused on what matters most: delivering an experience customers can count on.

Looking for a 3PL that takes the time to understand your business?

Start a conversation with Barrett Distribution Centers.

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