PIM Software Is Now a Growth Tool

Today’s shoppers buy from a store’s website, marketplaces, and a half dozen social media networks. And every point of sale requires product information.

For small businesses, ecommerce platforms are typically the primary source of product data.

Larger retailers, manufacturers, and brands have long trusted product information management (PIM) software to be “the single point of truth” for data such as descriptions, specifications, and photography.

PIM Use

PIM software remains the best solution for businesses with thousands of SKUs in multiple channels and languages or dozens of product feeds.

What has changed, according to Martin Balaam, the CEO and founder of Pimberly, is how some businesses use PIM for growth.

“In two years’ time, in three years’ time, how much larger would you like your business to be?” Balaam asked rhetorically during my July 2025 interview.

Martin Balaam

“How much more revenue would you like to be generating? And depending on how small the business is, [the owner] might say, ‘I like it to grow 10x,’” Balaam continued.

To achieve that level of growth, a business has a few options.

• Raise prices, which is unlikely to work.
• Add SKUs and maintain the same conversion rates.
• Sell more of its existing items.
• Selling more profitable items.

The business might try to achieve these ends by adopting smarter buying practices, improving marketing and advertising, or optimizing the way it presents products in each channel. PIM software helps with the last option.

PIM to Persona

Not every shopper buys a given product for the same reason. Not every feature is important to every buyer. Not every shopper uses that product in the same way.

Marketers know this and, for years, have used personalization and recommendation engines to show shoppers the items they are likely to buy.

Those personalized recommendations pointed to product detail pages that described an item in the same way for every visitor, regardless of why that shopper might be interested in the product.

Modern PIMs can store and manage many versions of a product description and use AI to generate even more.

According to Balaam, each set of product descriptions, specifications, and images defines a product persona of sorts. These personas can vary based on demographics, such as age and geography, use cases, including workwear versus party dress, and even emotional appeal.

This level of personalization requires an ecommerce platform capable of dynamically switching product information in and out based on user cohorts or profiles. But if executed well, it leads to hyper-personalization.

Channels and Markets

Merchants not technically ready for a PIM-powered personalization on their own website can still adapt product data to multiple channels and marketplaces.

This means meeting a platform’s requirements — e.g., what to call a description field — as well as optimizing the product data for that channel’s primary audience.

An apparel retailer that knows its typical customer on Facebook is a 35-year-old female could choose to send product photography that includes models roughly that age. In comparison, the same business might choose images featuring models in their 20s for its TikTok Shop.

Hence images, descriptions, languages, and units of weight or measure are all optimized for a specific channel or marketplace.

AI for Scale

Artificial intelligence transforms PIM software from a centralized product database to a growth tool.

For example, think about how merchants translated product descriptions a few years ago. A business wanting to attract Korean-speaking shoppers, for example, would translate the descriptions in a few steps.

A human would simplify the English source, removing cultural slang, difficult-to-translate phrases, and similar complexities. Another human would translate that simplified version into Korean.

This process was repeated for every product, a monumental task.

With AI, it is possible to generate acceptable translations for every version of a product description in minutes, unlocking PIM’s potential as a growth tool.

According to Balaam, AI is helping with many formerly laborious tasks, including:

• Cleansing and normalizing supplier data.
• Auto-generating product descriptions.
• Automatic translation.
• Recommending categories.
• Creating lifestyle imagery.

AI is also making product data accessible to bots, chat interfaces, and future buying experiences like LLMs.

Not for All

For all its potential as a growth tool, PIM software remains complex to integrate and primarily serves relatively large businesses.

Optimizing a PIM for growth would likely take an effort similar to integrating an ERP tool.

Thus PIM solutions are not for every business. However, companies selling a large number of SKUs across multiple channels and marketplaces may find that a PIM makes optimizing and targeting more feasible.

Ecommerce and the Secondhand Boom

The online market for secondhand apparel should grow 13% annually in the U.S. through 2029, reaching $40 billion, according to a study from ThredUp, the resale platform. Other sources, including Credence Research, have released similar growth estimates.

The surge is creating ecommerce opportunities.

Drivers

Culture, marketplaces, and economics contribute to consumer demand for used clothing.

Environmentalism and sustainability likely influence some buyers. Often female, younger, and engaged in popular culture, these shoppers are aware of the environmental impact of fast fashion, leading them to seek more sustainable alternatives.

Marketplaces such as ThredUp, Swap.com, eBay, and Facebook Marketplace have all made finding used, returned, or overstock clothing easier, as they surface items that would have otherwise sold from brick-and-mortar shops or yard sales. Buyers seek items that might be trendy, vintage, or just hard to get.

Economics is also influencing consumers. The ThredUp study noted that secondhand garment and shoe sales took off in 2021, perhaps owing to the dual economic impacts of Covid and the first set of U.S. trade tariffs against China in 2018-19.

Since 2021, tariffs on Chinese-made clothing have continued to increase. President Biden bumped them up in May 2024, and more recently, President Trump increased tariffs again, potentially making some new clothing items more expensive and driving shoppers toward the secondary apparel market.

Opportunity

With traditional retailing, large chains often have a competitive advantage from buying power and access to identical products at lower prices. The secondhand clothing and footwear market is different and, as such, offers an opportunity for small and mid-sized sellers.

Sources for used apparel include brick-and-mortar shops, estate sales, and closets.

First, the secondhand apparel market is inefficient. Many thrift stores and individual sellers are not web-savvy or familiar with local demand. The result is underpriced quality clothing. Knowledgeable resellers capitalize, sourcing those items and selling to a national or global community.

For example, a local thrift store may sell a vintage Levi’s denim jacket for $25, while the same item can fetch $75 or more on Depop or Etsy, thanks to an urban fashion trend 2,000 miles away. SMBs can acquire inventory at low prices and resell at good margins almost as easily as major enterprises.

Second, brand and trend awareness also creates an opportunity. Sellers who recognize undervalued luxury or vintage items can maximize profit by reselling on niche platforms aimed at buyers who understand their worth.

However, finding secondhand and vintage clothing to sell online is not easy. What creates the opportunity also makes sourcing inventory a challenge.

Here are a few approaches to finding used, returned, or overstock clothing and footwear.

• Liquidation and overstock sales. Large retailers and brands sometimes sell returns and unsold inventory, often in bulk. Try companies such as BULQ, B-Stock, Via Trading, Direct Liquidation, and Liquidation.com.

• Online marketplaces. eBay, Poshmark, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist are sources of valuable goods.

• Estate and garage sales can be goldmines for vintage and designer pieces, but visiting the events is laborious, and quality varies.

• Thrift and charity shops. Goodwill, Salvation Army, and local charity shops often have hidden gems at low prices. These items will have been washed and will likely be in good shape. But it also takes a lot of footwork.

For all of these sources, focus on quality. Buyers seek something cool, vintage, or sustainable.

Selling

Selling secondhand apparel is little different than any form of multichannel ecommerce. Merchants can set up a store on any popular ecommerce platform and advertise to drive traffic and conversions.

Social platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X are proven channels for used products. Live streaming newly discovered items could be effective. Many prominent marketplaces — eBay, Mercari, Etsy — allow for secondhand and vintage clothing. Peer-to-peer portals such as Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp, and Craigslist are promising options, too.

How to Create Print-on-Demand Products

Launching a drop-shipping business selling print-on-demand products can be as simple as uploading an image and opening an online shop, but the process may seem daunting to a new entrepreneur.

In 2024, total U.S. sales from on-demand printing on items such as apparel and posters reached an estimated $2.3 billion. Print-on-demand dropshipping will reportedly grow more than tenfold in the next decade, reaching roughly $26 billion in 2034.

Let’s consider two examples: (i) an AI-sourced t-shirt uploaded to Printful and (ii) a simple wall art design added to Prodigi.

Sourcing Artwork

Whether a shop sells t-shirts, postcards, or wall art, the design is the product. The shopper is buying the art. Where does an entrepreneur find art, and what are the arrangements to resell it?

One of the examples below uses an AI-generated image; the other is a simple text-only design from Adobe Photoshop. But more broadly, there are at least seven ways to source artwork for print-on-demand products.

• Create it. Artists and designers can make the art from Canva or Photoshop and sell it on their own online shop. No licensing is required.

• Hire a freelance designer. Entrepreneurs can commission custom artwork from freelance designers on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork. Some companies have successfully hired local art students.

• Collaborate with artists. Find artists on Behance or ArtStation and strike a deal. The collaboration could be a licensing fee, revenue sharing, or a combination. Art Licensing International and MHS Licensing are also sources.

• Buy stock images. Licensed stock images from sites such as Shutterstock or Adobe Stock are helpful as a basis for designs, ensuring the ecommerce shop has the right to use the imagery commercially.

• Use ready-made designs. Many print-on-demand companies have designs available.

• Use public domain art. Artwork in the public domain can be used and modified for print-on-demand products. The National Gallary of Art, for example, has more than 50,000 free, public-domain images.

• Have AI generate it. Finally, use artificial intelligence models such as Midjoury to create the artwork.

In 2023, Kevin Stecko from 80sTees.com described in an “Ecommerce Conversations” episode how his company licenses artwork, adding that characters from Disney, Star Wars, or Marvel comics require permission.

Printful

Let’s look at creating and publishing a product in Printful. This example assumes the seller has a Printful account integrated with a Shopify store using an app.

Products are “templates” in Printful. A merchant can add new products after creating a collection.

Creating a new product starts with selecting the item to sell. Printful offers wall art, phone cases, and more, but this example is a t-shirt. A merchant can choose its colors and sizes.

Printful walks online sellers through the setup process, often allowing updates to selections such as color and size on more than one screen.

Uploading the t-shirt design, which is AI-generated from my prompt, is the same as any internet file.

Uploading the design is simple and fast. This 14.8 MB AI image loaded in less than a second.

The merchant can apply logos or other artwork to the t-shirt’s sleeves, back, or labels.

With Printful, merchants can add graphics to several areas of the t-shirt.

The merchant can add the newly designed t-shirt to her integrated Shopify shop almost immediately.

First, she can select the mockups. Printful offers many, but keeping it simple often works best.

Printful creates the mockups for the merchant, a very nice feature.

Next, Printful permits users to name the product and customize its description before moving it to Shopify. The merchant should select the Shopify collection in which the product will reside and set the profit for each item.

Printful automatically pushes the t-shirt — with pricing and description — to Shopify, requiring no changes or updates on that platform.

Prodigi

Prodigi is another print-on-demand provider. In this example, I’ve connected my Prodigi account to a Squarespace shop. I initially created the products in Squarespace and then configured Prodigi.

Prodigi must know the type of product. The Prodigi and Squarespace integration requires merchants to work in both platforms to complete the process.

The Prodigi process begins when the merchant selects one or more items to be variations of the Squarespace product. This item is a “Box Frame, EMA 200gsm Fine Art Print, Mount / Matted, Perspex Glaze, 30x30cm/12×12.”

Prodigi’s editor permits placement and alignment.

Finally, the seller completes the finishing touches, such as a product mockup and description, back in Squarespace since the Prodigi to Squarespace integration is not automatic.

The merchant adds the product’s description and artwork to Squarespace, but Prodigi will automatically fulfill orders.

Print-on-demand

The steps — source art, select product, upload art — are similar for nearly every print-on-demand service. There are many other suppliers beyond Printful and Prodigi. Examples include Gooten, Gelato, and Sellfy.

Each supplier has strengths and weaknesses and different levels of integration with a given ecommerce platform. Prodigi’s fulfillment integrates with Squarespace, for example, but not necessarily for other platforms.

AI Resets Ecommerce Supply Chains

Supply chains impact customer satisfaction, operations, and profits. Artificial intelligence is a supply-chain game-changer, enabling businesses of all sizes to optimize demand forecasts, fulfillment, delivery routes, product-defect detection, and more.

Supply Chain Reset

Demand forecasting

Forget “just-in-case” stockpiles and overly complex logistics. That’s not a strategy — it’s negligence. AI-powered inventory and demand tools such as Forecast, ThroughPut, and Blue Yonder predict needs by analyzing historical data, seasonality, and demand signals.

Benefits:

• Avoid overstocking slow-moving products, freeing up capital.
• Eliminate costly stockouts with precise reorder points.
• Streamline inventory planning to match demand, boosting sales and profit margins.

Forecast predicts needs by analyzing historical data, seasonality, and demand signals.

Warehouse and fulfillment

Manual processes, poor layouts, and slow workflows are operational killers. AI can reorganize a warehouse by analyzing order patterns, optimizing storage allocation, and streamlining picking paths. AnyLogistix offers simulation tools to test warehouse strategies.

Benefits:

• Boost efficiency by prioritizing the fastest order-picking paths.
• Minimize human error.
• Ship products faster, improving customer satisfaction and retention.

AnyLogistix offers simulation tools to test warehouse strategies.

Delivery routes

AI tools integrate real-time traffic, weather, and environmental data to identify the most efficient delivery routes. NextBillion.ai provides customizable algorithms for unique delivery challenges, and Here combines live traffic updates with predictive analytics for the fastest and most cost-efficient delivery routes.

Benefits:

• Reduce fuel costs by cutting unnecessary miles.
• Lower carbon footprints, meeting consumer demands for sustainability.
• Improve delivery times.

Here combines live traffic updates with predictive analytics.

Fraud and defects

Hidden costs from preventable losses are easily overlooked. AI can detect anomalies in payment systems, supplier networks, and shipment tracking, flagging potential problems before they escalate. Brillio monitors real-time transaction patterns to identify irregularities, while DeepInspect uses AI to identify even subtle defects during production.

Benefits:

• Prevent costly chargebacks and refunds by detecting fraud in real-time.
• Maintain quality by identifying patterns in product defects.
• Protect your brand reputation by delivering superior goods.

DeepInspect uses AI to identify subtle defects during production.

Implementing AI

Adopting AI doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

• Start small with a pilot program to test AI’s impact. Choose an area, such as demand forecasting, with the most pain points, bottlenecks, costs, or inefficiencies.

• Choose scalable tools. Select affordable, easy-to-integrate AI solutions.

• Upskill your team. Train employees on the AI tools — to analyze and act on insights.

• Monitor and optimize. Track key performance indicators such as reduced lead times, lower costs, and improved customer satisfaction to refine AI adoption over time.

By embracing AI, upskilling teams, and fostering innovation, businesses can build smarter, greener, and more agile supply chains.

Can Ecommerce Spur On-Demand Manufacturing?

On-demand manufacturing has taken much longer to mature than some would have wished. The idea is straightforward: Don’t build or complete a product until someone orders it.

The advantages are numerous, including enhanced customization, elevated sustainability, cross-border ecommerce, and lower inventory holding costs.

An on-demand manufacturing project starts only after a customer places an order.

Zero Inventory

Print-on-demand firms, a subset of on-demand manufacturing, have emphasized the advantages for years, often focusing on reduced inventory costs and borrowing the “zero inventory” moniker from the heavy manufacturing industry.

“Part of what makes the zero-inventory model interesting is that it can empower more people to start and scale their businesses globally, without the hassles of managing inventory, shipping, or making significant upfront investments — while reducing the impact on the environment through local production,” wrote Julie Ryland, vice president of public relations and communications at print-on-demand sourcing firm Gelato in an email message to Practical Ecommerce.

“Bigger picture, this model helps redefine global manufacturing and distribution — enabling small business owners and creators to start and grow a business in a way that is better for both people and the planet. The shift from mass production to mass customization on demand also presents a market opportunity for the print industry,” continued Ryland.

That opportunity has arrived. According to a July 2024 report from Precedence Research, a consultancy, the worldwide market for print-on-demand products will hit $10.2 billion in 2024, reaching $87 billion in a decade.

In the United States, Precedence projects the print-on-demand industry to reach $2 billion in 2024 and $22 billion in the next 10 years, roughly a 27.6% compound annual growth rate.

Meanwhile, the on-demand manufacturing industry is smaller. Various sources put the global market for on-demand manufacturing (ODM) using technologies such as 3D printing and computer numerical control machining at approximately $10 billion in 2024.

The segment becomes more or less nonexistent when isolated to products sold via ecommerce.

There are, however, rays of hope.

ODM Opportunity

Print-on-demand has demonstrated the potential. Many entrepreneurs run profitable businesses using Gelato or its competitors, such as Printful, Gooten, and Printify.

These printing solutions integrate with leading ecommerce platforms, and just like that, one has a global, zero-inventory drop-shipping business.

What if other products could do that? Even large items.

Here is an example. An Idaho-based manufacturer specializing in kayak trailers for the fishing industry plans to release an on-demand trailer system in 2025. When a customer orders, workers will pass metal sheets and tubes through a laser cleaning, cutting, and welding process, producing a ship-flat trailer kit, ready to package in a couple of hours.

This general idea applies to other products, such as furniture, antique auto parts, medical devices, and jewelry.

ODM for Ecommerce

To take off in ecommerce, on-demand manufacturing would need implementation, automation, and integration.

Implementation

Implementation in this context is having shops willing to manufacture a given product when an order comes in.

Hundreds of printing shops, for example, are connected to Gelato and Shopify and ready to take a standard blank t-shirt, print on it using standard methods, and ship it on behalf of the merchant.

The on-demand manufacturing industry needs this same level of shop implementation. The made-to-order fishing kayak example came from the brand actually producing the item. It had the specialized equipment and owned the raw materials. For on-demand manufacturing to work broadly with ecommerce, job shops must be able to pick up an order and manufacture it in a standard way.

Automation

Automation and even artificial intelligence could help manage shop capacity and handle technical files.

First, a network must instantly match orders with the best manufacturing facility. Print-on-demand services automatically route a t-shirt order to the closest available printer with the right equipment. Creating a similar system for complex manufacturing requires sophisticated automation and intelligence to assess shop capabilities, workload, and geographic location.

Second is the technical challenge of file preparation. Unlike standard product photos in print-on-demand, manufacturing requires precise technical specifications. Each facility might use different equipment requiring specific file formats for specialized machines and 3D printers. Enter AI, which could convert file formats.

For on-demand manufacturing to scale, these automation systems must work behind the scenes, making complex decisions instantly while keeping the process simple for merchants.

Integration

Integration could be the last step. It involves making it easy for small or mid-sized ecommerce shops to start an on-demand manufacturing business. The process could include adding an app to Shopify, installing a drag-and-drop product designer, and selling made-to-order items.

The company that solves these three hurdles could bring manufacturing on demand to ecommerce.

Retail Arbitrage with AliExpress, Shopify, DSers

New and seasoned sellers can expand a product line and turn a profit by reselling items from other retailers.

Retail arbitrage is as old as ecommerce itself. The term describes purchasing a product at a brick-and-mortar store and then selling it on Amazon, eBay, or a branded ecommerce site.

The drop-shipped version includes buying from a discount marketplace such as China’s AliExpress.

Let’s examine an AliExpress arbitrage using Shopify and DSers. Shopify is among the most popular ecommerce platforms. DSers is an arbitrage app that helps connect AliExpress to ecommerce shops.

Shopify starts at $29 per month, and DSers at $49. A store owner will also need a free AliExpress account and then set up the three accounts in the order of Shopify first, DSers second, and AliExpress third.

Selecting Products

With DSers and similar applications, the first step is to select the products to be drop-shipped via AliExpress arbitrage.

Dsers and similar applications allow a business owner to find products on the AliExpress marketplace.

From DSers, store owners can search the AliExpress inventory directly using keywords or filters. A single click adds a product to the import list.

Add items at Dsers from AliExpress search results to an import list.

Within the import list, items already sent to Shopify (via other sellers) have a translucent gray banner. Any item can be edited and split.

Products already sent to Shopify by other sellers have a gray bar at the top of the listing. Any product can be edited or split.

Edit a Product

The AliExpress products are typically light on descriptions and information, so editing a product is critical.

First, add a Shopify Collection, Type, Tags, and Vendor.

Before sending a product to Shopify, specify its collection and type.

Next, the AliExpress items may have descriptive but bland titles. For example, one science fiction t-shirt was titled “New fashion Men’s Stars Treks Mr. Gorn Fighting School Vintage Pure Cotton Tees Short Sleeve T Shirts Crewneck Clothing Party.”

I edited this verbose product name to “Star Trek ‘Mr. Gorn’s Stick and Rock Fighting School’ T-Shirt.”

The description section in DSers includes basic product specifications and an overview that could be loaded with images that are not necessarily helpful for the U.S. market. Definitely spend time customizing these sections.

It is also a good idea to check the product variants. This t-shirt example looked horrible when printed on light colors. Eliminating those variants will make for a better product detail page.

The Variant section on DSers is also where you can update the product’s price and “compare at price.”

Remember that loads of other websites will have the identical product — be sure to check their prices.

Update the price and “compare at price” in the DSers app.

Push to Shopify

When the product description and pricing are complete, two button clicks send the item from DSers to Shopify, loading it and all variants into the proper collection.

It may take a few minutes for all of the images to populate in Shopify, and don’t be surprised if you need to clean up the product listing. Organizing the sizes of t-shirts so that they are listed in order as “sm,” “md,” “lg,” and “xl” is a common step.

DSers moves the product information, variants, and product photos into Shopify.

Making a Sale

From a shopper’s perspective, ordering a drop-shipped arbitrage item on Shopify is the same as anything else, with one exception: Shipping will take seven to 10 days.

After completing the sale, the merchant orders the item on AliExpress via DSers. The default setting in DSers is to pay individually for each item in two steps — order it and then pay for it on AliExpress.

Orders placed on the Shopify store appear as orders in DSers and must be purchased on AliExpress.

Inventory Gaps

Online arbitrage can be a standalone business model or used only to fill inventory gaps.

The Shopify store in this article had an inventory gap of no licensed products, essential for t-shirt marketing. Online arbitrage permitted the shop to sell licensed products without buying the inventory.

There is nothing unique or exclusive about AliExpress arbitrage. An identical item will be available from many sellers. Thus marketing is vital.

The job is not so much to post the products as to promote them.

Poor Marketing Kills Ecommerce Dropshipping

Dropshipping is a good way to source products without much investment. Unfortunately, this seemingly turn-key model has little barrier to entry and thus attracts many competitors with razor-thin margins and no clear way to differentiate.

Yet creating a successful dropshipping business is not impossible, provided the would-be entrepreneur understands the growth and profit challenges.

Dropshipping Boost

I once heard ecommerce dropshipping described as “the perfect business model for anyone who wants all the stress and frustration of running a business without any of the pesky profits to worry about.”

While this description is a little unfair to an industry with estimated sales of $351.8 billion in 2024, according to Oberlo, a dropship provider, it also hints at the benefits of starting or scaling a business.

As a business model, ecommerce dropshipping is attractive for a reason: it is relatively easy to start and very low risk.

There are at least four reasons an entrepreneur might be attracted to dropshipping.

• Little or no investment. There is no need to purchase inventory upfront.

• Low risk. Merchants only pay for products they sell, minimizing the risk.

• Access to products. Stores can offer a variety of products without worrying about storage or investment. When I led ecommerce for a retail chain, we would use drop shippers to add complementary products to our site, boosting average order value.

• Flexibility. Sellers can change product offerings based on market trends without significant financial risk.

All of these features focus on product sourcing and financial investment. The trade-off, however, is a marketing problem.

A Marketing Business

Selling drop-shipped items is a choice to focus on attracting and converting customers rather than developing and sourcing products.

Effectively, when you start or scale a dropshipping business, you prefer solving marketing problems rather than sourcing.

And there will be marketing problems. The top three are likely customer acquisition limits, undifferentiated products, and customer relationships.

Not much CAC

Think for a moment about a traditional retailer that orders products from a manufacturer at wholesale prices, warehouses the items, and sells them for, say, a 25% margin.

Thus, a $100 sale will result in a $25 gross profit. If the retailer wanted a return on advertising spend of 4:1, it could invest $6.25 to acquire a customer — that would be its target customer acquisition cost.

The drop shipping supply chain is longer and more expensive by comparison. More parties take a cut of the profit, and some are taking significant percentages because they carry the inventory risk.

A typical margin for a store selling a drop-shipped item may be as low as 10%, according to Shopify. So, the same $100 sale will result in $10 of margin. A 4:1 ROAS puts this shop’s target CAC at $2.50.

If a retailer and a dropship shop sell identical items — a real possibility — the marketing challenge is clear: the dropship store must acquire customers for less.

Same products

Selling an identical product exacerbates the already anemic CAC. Yet selling the same products is what most dropship-based stores do.

This t-shirt is available on a specialty t-shirt shop, AliExpress, and the Dsers-AliExpress Dropshipping app.

Consider the Dsers-AliExpress Dropshipping, an app for Shopify. The product takes an item from AliExpress and adds it directly to a Shopify store. It will do this for any Shopify store, potentially placing the identical AliExpress item in dozens or even hundreds of shops.

Hence it’s not enough to market a store’s products. Operating an ecommerce dropshipping business requires differentiating from many others.

Customer relationships

Marketing tasks should not end when a sale is consummated. Some of the best tactics focus on retaining and engaging those buyers afterward.

Thus building strong customer relationships is crucial, especially in a dropshipping business where the same products might be available from multiple sources at similar prices.

That means investing time in content marketing, email marketing, retargeting, and social media marketing.

4-5-4 Calendar Aids Retail Planning

Since the 1930s, retailers have used the 4-5-4 fiscal calendar to streamline and improve forecasting. This somewhat peculiar planning method could help modern retailers and direct-to-consumer brands.

Ending the year on the same weekday simplifies comparisons across timeframes, aiding in strategic decision-making.

Here’s how.

4-5-4 Calendar

The 4-5-4 retail calendar is a scheduling framework that divides the year into months of four weeks, five weeks, and four weeks in a repeated pattern, ensuring each fiscal month starts and ends on the same weekday. This design aligns sales data across similar periods.

In the United States, the National Retail Federation maintains a 4-5-4 retail calendar for its members.

The NRF’s 4-5-4 retail calendar for 2024-to-2026 divides the year into consistent three-month quarters, wherein the months have four, five, and four weeks, respectively. Click image to enlarge.

4-5-4 Advantages

The 4-5-4 calendar structures the fiscal year into consistent, comparable periods.

The ability to compare date ranges — particularly weeks — facilitates smoother planning and estimates of consumer demand.

I spent nearly 10 years as the director of marketing and ecommerce for an omnichannel retailer. We depended on a 4-5-4 calendar so heavily that I was surprised recently when the respected owner of an ecommerce business told me he’d never heard of it.

Planning. For purchasing and marketing departments, the 4-5-4 calendar is a roadmap through retail’s inherent highs and lows.

The calendar recognizes the predictable swings in consumer shopping, optimizing, if you will, for those critical high-traffic windows, such as major holidays and seasonal shifts.

Imagine planning for the Christmas shopping season, which includes Black Friday. On the Gregorian calendar, Black Friday shifts between November 23 and 29, depending on the year.

This variability makes it challenging to accurately compare year-over-year sales for November because the number of post-Black Friday shopping days in that month can differ.

Enter the 4-5-4 calendar, which groups weeks into a consistent pattern, wherein each fiscal month starts and ends on the same day of the week every year. With this setup, Black Friday falls in the last week of November with exactly one shopping day afterward. In the Gregorian calendar, the number of shopping days after Black Friday varies from one to three.

With the 4-5-4 calendar, Black Friday occurs in the last week of November and is followed by exactly one shopping day that month, simplifying annual performance comparisons. Image: NRF.

This 4-5-4 consistency allows for direct, apples-to-apples comparisons of the critical holiday shopping period from one year to the next. Merchants can accurately measure the impact of Black Friday promotions and the subsequent shopping days until the end of November without the distortions caused by Thanksgiving Day’s floating date. Easter presents similar challenges.

Procurement and marketing teams can forecast demand, plan inventory, and set marketing strategies more precisely.

Analysis. Adopting the 4-5-4 calendar introduces a level of standardization that is helpful for the analytical rigor required in retailing and ecommerce.

This standardization simplifies conducting quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year analyses in most cases. However, there is a snag. Since a year is a bit longer than 52 weeks, the 4-5-4 calendar has a “leap year” where a 53rd week is added. Thus, the comparison fails every five or six years. Nonetheless, it’s far more standardized than the Gregorian alternative.

Bottom line, merchants can compare performance metrics such as sales, website traffic, and inventory turnover without the shifting number of shopping days.

4-5-4 Challenges

The 4-5-4 calendar presents challenges in training, technology, and financial responsibilities.

• Training and education. The 4-5-4 system requires training — explaining what it is, how it works, and how to use it. Accounting folks will likely pick it up quicker than marketers.

• Technological integration. Transitioning to a 4-5-4 fiscal calendar may require substantial adjustments to retail management software, analytics tools, and back-office systems — although the shift is an opportunity to audit current technologies.

• Financial responsibilities. A 4-5-4 methodology can affect obligations that align with the Gregorian calendar, such as tax reporting and compliance. Businesses must plan how their fiscal reporting will interface with tax and other requirements, possibly necessitating adjustments to accounting practices or additional reconciliation steps. Tax professionals experienced with non-standard fiscal periods can provide crucial insights.

Best Option?

Budgetary tools such as the 4-5-4 retail calendar have been around for years. If planning and comparisons pose no challenge for your business, focus elsewhere. Otherwise, switching the calendar might be just what you need.