I was a manager for Macys for way too long.... Christmas started in January..... We'd sit through the post mortems, analyze them for a month and have our next holiday season numbers finished before the end of January..... Just in time for 3 weeks of inventory.

The winter season, holiday merchandise and floors would be set before the end of October...November 1st we start seasonal hiring, by December 1st we'd have a staff increase of 150%. That was just at store level. We had regional people who's job it was to analyse the holiday season all year long.... Demographics, trends, displays ... Planning meetings... It was years before I knew what a normal holiday was.... God I'm glad I'm out of retail!