This year Christmas Day falls at the end of the week and this gives consumers the expectation of extra shopping days in December. This is never very helpful in getting ‘late idea products’ like boxed chocolates selling.

We order early from our wholesaler and placed our Christmas confectionery order back in June. It reflected our performance last December and the deals being offered for this. We went big on a handful of lines and at the end of November I was getting just a little twitchy about the level of stock sitting in our stockroom.

My wife tells me not to worry as I am like this every Christmas and Easter, but to sell stock retailers need to be active. This year we have adopted the simple idea of using a square wire dump bin and placing it with just one line at a time next to the counter.

It’s simple stuff, but in the first week we cleared almost all of our stock of Quality Street at two for £6.00 and this week we are on track to sell most of our Maltesers at two for £2.20. And next week we will see what needs help.