Treat end-of-season sales like a well-orchestrated heist.

This time of year, it feels like every store, brand, and platform is preparing for its next big sale — not unlike a crew planning its next big heist. Every brand wants the consumer’s attention, money, and loyalty. It’s natural; we’re at the end of the spring/summer season and ready to launch into fall. Even the best demand planning creates ending inventory that needs to be cleared. Failing to have a small percentage of ending inventory is seen as bad planning — or worse, as stifling sales by not having enough supply to cover demand and growth.

On the other side of the conversation, many marketers argue that sales are critical for capturing consumer attention: rewarding current customers while targeting consumers who only buy at a discount. No matter your perspective, the goals of a sale are generally the same — and sales are a necessary part of the business. The goal of this article isn’t to discourage sales, but to share a perspective on doing them thoughtfully: in a way that achieves your objectives and supports your brand and partnerships in a healthy, responsible way.

I like to treat end-of-season sales like a well-orchestrated heist. The best bank robbers don’t walk in and improvise — they have a complete plan. At retail, this means marketing and operations working together to ensure that the “vault” of inventory retains its highest value. They get in, are as productive as possible, and get out fast and clean. Don’t be afraid to think about worst-case scenarios so you can make minor adjustments during the event — but stick to the plan. The more disciplined the plan, the more successful the mission. You can’t rob a bank — or run a sale — every week. Sales should be infrequent and worth the risk.

So, let’s plan the heist. The first step should be surveying the market landscape, anticipating various outcomes, and ensuring you have a complete and powerful game plan. Speed and accuracy rarely travel together — but in this case, they must. A sale depends on creating urgency, so limiting your time frame makes the mission most impactful. Ask yourself: what does success look like? Generally, success means clearing out old product, maximizing revenue, preserving the brand’s (or store’s) integrity as a full-price business, and capturing new fans. (Great brands provide value no matter where they play — from action sports to luxury.)

Frequency and event length are crucial parts of your strategy. This deserves separate consideration from individual event planning. Trust me: the shorter and more powerful your events, the greater your success will be. When Amazon launched Prime Day, it became the gold standard in controlled chaos. They did several things right — amazing deals, a massive audience, fast shipping — but above all, they limited the sale to just two days to maximize impact.

Amazon generated $15 billion and 375 million units in just two 2-day events. Since its adoption, they’ve stayed consistent, teaching their customers to act when it counts. Six months of compression and anticipation shows discipline.

Take a long-term approach to how you run your business. Plan the number of large events you’ll have annually. Some successful businesses even name the events to set clear expectations: Anniversary Sale implies once a year, End of Season implies four times a year, Friends and Family is VIP only, while Archive Sale evokes product rarity. Avoid making frequency decisions based on the success or failure of one event. When a brand experiences short-term success, that’s great — that was the plan — but many turn a good thing into an addiction. The final hours of your event are the retail version of the getaway car: move away quickly.

Spread the wealth and diversify your events. In the physical world, try different locations to capture new fans. (Never rob the same bank twice.) Digitally, challenge yourself to reinvent what creating urgency and value means. Can you run a successful event without extreme discounting? Maybe I’m naïve, but I believe value comes from discipline and values. The less frequently you go on sale, the less frequently it’s expected. My favorite brand is Porsche — yes, an overused example, and one that lives in a luxury space few can match — but I’m fascinated by a once-struggling brand whose values and supply control allow it to demand pricing arguably beyond the specs of its products.

People forget that Porsche product sales fell from 50k units in 1986 to only 15k in 1993, the product was wrong, and the strategy outdated. They looked to operations to implement lean manufacturing, lowered costs, increased output by adding SUV’s and got healthy. Most of this sounds like standard business and table stakes but the strategic effort was taking these profits and doubling down on R&D and racing to support their hero product the 911 and variants like Targa, GTS, Turbo and GT3. They were disciplined and protective of their brand and the market responded. Today Porsche puts on a master class in Brand power + demand management.

Whether you’re a legacy retailer or a rising DTC brand, resist the urge to treat sales like a clearance-bin fire drill. Make them rare. Make them count. And above all, make them feel like a once-in-a-season heist. Get in. Make the impact. Get out clean.