What it’s like running a warehouse on Black Friday, according to Beachwaver, Leatherology and Weezie

“I remember that, one year, I had to go on and be like, ‘Listen, we’re a family-run warehouse. My cousins pick up the recycling. My brother-in-law runs the orders. We are working the night shift,'” she said. “‘You may think these are huge brands, but everyone behind the scenes — especially at independent companies, women-owned companies — we don’t have [a lot] of funding.'”  

The days between Black Friday through Cyber Monday are poised to be the busiest shopping events of 2025. Bain and Company predicts they will account for 9% of all holiday shopping and 11% of total retail sales growth over last year.

But for smaller, independent brands that oversee their own shipping and distribution operations, it’s also the most hectic time of the year. Orders are coming in at a heavy pace, with three times as many employees working in the warehouse space packing boxes. Customers are expecting to receive orders quickly and completely, adding pressure to already-tight shipping deadlines. Then there are the ever-changing, uncontrollable forces of weather that could potentially interrupt any best-laid plans.

To meet the heavy demand, brands that own their warehouse and distribution operations like Beachwaver, Leatherology and Weezie say pulling off a successful Cyber Week comes down to having adequate staffing levels, strong forecasts, clear communication around deals and promotions and properly cross-training employees should they need to bring more people in to handle higher order volumes.

The stakes are high: About 53% of respondents to Blue Yonder’s 2025 Global Consumer Holiday Shipping Survey expect standard shipping to happen within two to four days of placing an order.

Potempa said one of the biggest risks a company can take in the fourth quarter is selling more than its logistics can handle. The 15-year-old, family-run company has a warehouse in Illinois where it packs all of its orders with about 13 full-time workers in the distribution center. For the past four or five years, it’s relied on bundled deals for the holiday shopping season to help streamline its operations.

“We ship out the items ourselves, so we’ve always been very careful,” she said. “How much can you sell, and still have your warehouse fulfill it on time? A couple of years ago, it was challenging because we were almost too busy and had too many orders. And we were like, ‘OK, we’ve got to balance that, because what if we can’t ship them on time? We are not Amazon. So how do we make sure the customers are happy?'”

More workers, and faster lines

The first step in making the most of the holiday season is bringing on adequate seasonal staff. Tosin Kolade, the COO of Whisker, said the company has around 700 workers in all, about 10% of whom are seasonal support. Around 400 people work in the manufacturing and distribution arm of Whisker, which is the parent company of the Litter Robot, an automated litter box.

The process of scaling up begins as early as June and July, especially for hiring manufacturing staff. “We’re hiring more people, and we’re building more finished goods in-house to then make sure that we’re in a really good position for Black Friday and that we’re not having to do this huge up-staffing and up-leveling of everything only for a two-month period or a one-month period,” Kolade said.

This year, Kolade said the company anticipates a busier Black Friday than usual because it has new models and bundled deals through the end of the year. Behind the scenes, it has added 100,000 square feet to its manufacturing facility to help meet growing demand, and it has also made its lines run faster to accommodate more manufacturing and processing.

“We’ve scaled up what used to be a line that would produce around 1,000 robots a day,” he said. “That line, through additional conveyor belts, through some robotics and some automation, has scaled up to be able to produce 20% more.”

Rae Liu, co-founder and creative director of the leather goods company Leatherology, said the company has about three times the number of warehouse staffers during the fourth quarter to help meet increased demand. The Dallas-based company specializes in monogrammed leather products ranging from handbags and wallets to keychains and desk accessories. Over half of its orders require some sort of personalization.

But applying monograms correctly requires different skill levels based on the kind of product being altered. In response, Liu said the company’s core staff tend to handle the more challenging pieces during high-volume times. Seasonal staffers are taught to fulfill more basic orders — like monogramming wallets with a flat stamp — or to handle pick-and-pack operations.

“Getting someone to be able to monogram at the quality level that we need can take a really long time,” she said. “It requires a certain level of skill and training to be able to do that.”

The art and science of forecasting

Beyond ensuring there are enough workers on hand to handle order volumes, forecasting demand is a critical part of Cyber Week planning.

Liu said the four-week window between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year factored into the forecast, leading the company to launch its Black Friday deals earlier in November. “When you have to condense (the season) into four weeks instead of five, it makes it even more challenging,” she said. “So for us, it’s led to us starting our sales earlier because we really need to find a way to spread out the volume.”

Lindsey Johnson, CEO of the luxury personalized towel brand Weezie, said the company relies on forecasting to ensure it has enough inventory and staff to meet demand. The fourth quarter typically makes up 40% of the company’s annual revenue. But this year, it’s poised to be one of its busiest yet, as the company is already up 60% year to date. Some new items, like a kid-sized robe, have sold out even before Black Friday officially began.

Last year, Johnson said the company had higher sales than it expected and ended up missing some delivery dates. To prevent a similar situation, Weezie is working with more carriers this year to increase flexibility in getting orders out. Internally, Johnson said, the team has staffing contingency plans around who can work in what departments, and has spent the last several months cross-training around embroidery, measurement and pick-and-pack.

“We’ve definitely invested in processes and systems and carriers, but the people component is so huge for manual labor. And just having the right number of people with the right staffing schedules staffed and trained on the right things, and keeping them motivated and excited to come to work, [is important],” she said.

Strategic product and marketing tactics

At Beachwaver, a big part of the brand’s holiday marketing is to offer bundled deals. That’s not only to drive more sales and excitement, Potempa said, but also to help ease warehouse strain.

This year, Beachwaver’s “She Sleighs” campaign offers new, daily bundles in collaboration with other women-owned beauty and lifestyle brands including Borghese, Tarte and Rebecca Minkoff. One bundle, for example, included a Beachwaver-brand hair serum, French hair pin and Luxxi press-on nails. So far, around half the deals have sold out.

Potempa said figuring out which bundles to offer on which days was a strategic inventory question, with smaller brands participating in the beginning of the month, while bundles done in collaboration with larger brands were held until the end of the month. The idea was that these larger brands would have more inventory to ship to Beachwaver and, thus, could meet higher demand during the busier shopping days.

“Our warehouse has done a phenomenal job of even simply moving the items closer to each other,” Potempa said. “So if we know today it’s the Beachwaver B1 and the tanning lotion and the scalp massager, or whatever products are in that bundle, they just moved them closer to each other and made a SKU for the bundles in advance.”

Potempa also said the company pays close attention to inventory counts and thresholds when deals are in demand. The brand sells on TikTok Shop, which has a one-hour processing delay, versus the orders from its Shopify-powered site, which come in immediately.

Beachwaver’s warehouse operations have become a critical part of its brand identity and are frequently featured in its social media content. During the Black Friday and Cyber Week season, the Beachwaver team is set up to do daily livestreams on its website and on TikTok.

That level of transparency can open up the brand to criticism. Angry shoppers awaiting their orders may jump in the comments — but Potempa said there have been instances of loyal Beachwaver fans jumping in the comments to remind others that, “Tom, Sarah’s brother-in-law, is working to get it to you.”

“Now that they’ve been brought into the warehouse scene, they’ve been able to see how hard our team works,” Potempa said.