Every meeting in your building right now is about Q4.
The promo calendar. The creative refresh. Whether the container clears customs before Thanksgiving.
That's the right thing to be doing. For most consumer brands Q4 is the year.
It's also why nobody is looking at 2027.
Somebody has to be, and not in November when the quarter is over and planning season opens. The first real 2027 decision comes due before Q4 even starts.
The number for next year already exists somewhere.
A slide, a board conversation, or just in your head. Call it $30M against $22M this year.
Nobody's approved it. Finance is still modeling. Marketing hasn't seen it.
And it's already too late to start.
A revenue target becomes a plan when it has units under it
Run the chain down.
$30M at an $86 AOV is 348,800 orders. At 1.4 units an order, that's 488,000 units.
You'll ship about 358,000 this year.
So the number underneath the number is 130,000 additional units. At $19 landed, $2.47M of inventory that does not exist yet.
That's the plan. Not the $30M.
Eight million in growth costs $2.5M before it earns anything
Keep going, this time from the demand side.
348,800 orders with 40% coming from new customers is 139,500 new customers. At a $46 CAC, $6.4M of media, up $1.7M from this year.
Now put it together. $8M of incremental revenue at 55% contribution is $4.4M. Take out the incremental media and you're at $2.69M, before opex touches any of it.
So you fund $2.47M of inventory up front to earn $2.69M spread across twelve months.
And the inventory doesn't come back. You're running at a permanently higher level, so that money converts into a bigger balance sheet and stays there.
That isn't an argument against the plan. That is the plan. It's just never written down in a form anyone can approve.
The first irreversible decision lands before the plan is done
Q1 is 20% of the year. 97,700 units. $1.86M landed. A 30% deposit at PO, so $557,000.
Those units have to be in the warehouse January 1.
Production and transit runs 100 days. Add the month of buffer you promised yourself after last year's delay.
The signature is in the last week of August.
Nobody has approved the number. It's still moving. And the first $557,000 of it is due this week.
That's the part that makes planning season a fiction. The calendar says you decide in November. The lead time says you committed in August.
Build the chain before you defend the number
Revenue, AOV, orders, units, POs, deposits, dates. One line per quarter. It fits on a page.
Then find the earliest date the chain forces a commitment.
That date is your planning deadline. Not December.
Every revenue target has a date underneath it where it stops being a conversation.
Most brands find theirs in hindsight, when someone asks why Q1 shipped light.
Find yours while it's still arithmetic.
If you can't produce the chain from next year's number down to the dates it obligates, set up some time and we’ll walk through it. → Book a Call
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