Peak Season Warehouse Optimization Guide

Peak season doesn’t have to mean missed service-level agreements (SLAs), a chaotic warehouse, and burned-out staff. With the right strategies, ecommerce businesses can turn seasonal surges into growth opportunities.

This guide delivers a step-by-step breakdown of peak season warehouse optimization, from forecasting demand to managing inventory post-peak. Learn from the top-performing UK fashion brand Hype and walk away with practical actions you can implement today.

Peak season warehouse optimization is the process of configuring your warehouse to handle temporary spikes in order volume, without compromising speed, accuracy, or customer satisfaction. It includes:

• Inventory forecasting, planning, and control
• Warehouse layout and workflow changes
• Scalable staffing and training
• Strategic use of automation and technology
• Post-peak evaluation and cleanup

Most ecommerce warehouses are designed for average throughput. Peak season strain comes when order volume grows faster than the systems meant to handle it. This can result in delayed fulfillment, errors, stress, and customer frustration.

• Space constraints: Incoming stock overflows shelving and blocks aisles.
• Disorganization: People, papers, and products get lost in the chaos.
• Slow pick times: Pathways get crowded; layouts aren’t built for speed.
• Costly overtime: Workers put in extra hours to keep up with orders.
• Training bottlenecks: New hires struggle to get productive quickly.
• Overselling: Systems don’t update inventory in real time.
• Returns overload: Post-peak returns pile up and eat into margin.

What to do: Update warehouse operations with scalable solutions proven to handle your most ambitious peak volumes and more. Read customer success stories from reputable ecommerce shipping and fulfillment software brands. Look for industries and verticals like yours. What kind of growth have they achieved, and which software solutions are they using to handle it?

Many businesses heavily rely on manual or paper-based warehouse processes, disconnected systems, and “tribal knowledge.” These methods tend to create bottlenecks and errors in the fulfillment process when peak season hits. Plus, changing the warehouse layout or process can break a system that depends on human memory.

What to do: Upgrade your warehouse software to replace inefficient, error-prone warehouse practices:

• Inventory management system (IMS) – An IMS replaces spreadsheets for inventory planning and demand forecasting. It offers predictive purchasing to reorder inventory before you run out.
• Order management system (OMS) – An OMS integrates with all your sales channels. It organizes all orders in one place for easy processing without logging into multiple platforms.
• Warehouse management system (WMS) – A WMS replaces paper pick lists and warehouse “treasure hunts” with barcode scanning and mobile-guided picking routes.
• Multi-carrier shipping software – Shipping software integrates with your WMS to automate rate shopping, shipping service selection, and label generation while preventing mis-ships.
• Multichannel listing software – A catalog and listing management solution integrates with all your sales channels to update all product listings from one central hub. Automatically de-list products that sell out.

Tip: Peak success doesn’t come from brute force. It comes from strategic system optimization, visibility into warehouse performance, and faster workflows.

Want a closer look at Hype’s approach to peak planning? See 5 Tips for Ecommerce Peak Season Prep 

Sales forecasting helps you stock appropriately, avoid overbuying, and minimize the risk of stockouts when sales surge.

• Use historical data from your IMS, ecommerce, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms – It’s best to use an all-in-one ecommerce platform that offers customizable inventory and sales reports and forecasting tools.
• Identify trends by channel and SKU – Use pre-built or custom reports to discover the bestselling sales channels and the top SKUs for each channel year over year (YoY). Adjust your inventory to follow these trends.
• Consider current trends and promotions – Which SKUs are your current winners? Which products will you promote with peak season marketing campaigns and sales events? What’s trending with your target market this season?
• Plan around socio-economic and geopolitical factors – What kind of buying power does your target market have this season? How does it compare to previous years? Will trade wars or other geopolitical factors affect consumer behavior?
• Adjust forecasts weekly during peak to respond to real-time changes – Monitor sales trends during peak. Utilize strategic sales tactics to move inventory faster or slow down sales on SKUs that are running low.

A tool that helps:

Descartes Sellercloud all-in-one ecommerce operations platform

• Syncs listings and available inventory across all channels for quick updates.
• Forecasts how much to order based on current aggregate inventory, product velocity, purchase order (PO) ETA, and the previously selected sales period.
• Automates purchase orders to replenish inventory according to forecasts and stock levels.
• Supports dynamic storage to accommodate extra inventory according to forecasts.

Have you been looking for a tool like this? Request a demo

To redesign your warehouse layout for speed, focus on dynamic storage, zoning, popular SKU proximity, low space, aisle design, and mobile label printing. These strategies reduce walking time, increase pick speed, and eliminate visual scanning.

Peak hiring often means onboarding temporary workers. If your training process is manual or relies on memorization, it leaves too much room for error and slows down the entire team.

• Use consistent, simple, repeatable workflows. Design standard operating procedures (SOPs) and instructions to require as little mental effort as possible.
• Don’t rely on memory; provide visual aids and cheat sheets. Clearly label zones, post SOPs in prominent places, and provide aids in multiple languages.
• Assign team leads or “buddies” for fast feedback. Clarify expectations, establish roles, and build in accountability for new workers.
• Use role-based separation: scanning vs. packing vs. dispatch. Don’t expect each worker to do it all; narrow skills and workflows for greater efficiency.
• Provide technology to guide workers and prevent human errors. Use a mobile WMS for picking; set shipping automation for service selection and label printing.

How Descartes Peoplevox helps:

• “We’ve experienced 75% faster picking using 67% less labor.” – Grant Kiefaber, State & Liberty
• Seasonal workers can be trained to use the Descartes Peoplevox mobile WMS and be productive in under an hour.
• The interface is intuitive, and processes are clear and guided, reducing ramp time and errors.
• The WMS integrates with Descartes ShipRush to automate shipping label printing.

Integrated technology can help your warehouse team handle peak season order volumes without burning out or hiring extra personnel. Replace paper-based or labor-intensive processes with modern, automated methods to increase efficiency.

Key technologies:

• Warehouse management system (WMS): Handles real-time order processing, location mapping, guided pick routes, and workflow automation.

• Mobile barcode scanning: Speeds up picking, reduces walk time, and virtually eliminates human error and mis-picks.

• Inventory management system (IMS): Automatically sync inventory across sales channels and warehouses; use predictive purchasing to restock inventory.

• Order management system (OMS): Automatically prioritize which orders to pick first, update order status, and communicate with customers.

• Shipping software: Automatically rate shop, select shipping services, and print labels using multi-carrier shipping software like Descartes ShipRush.

• Purchasing software: Automate purchase orders and vendor communication to keep inventory adequately stocked.

• Dashboards: Monitor productivity, order fulfillment status, and SLA compliance in real time.

What you gain:

• Lower operational costs – Avoid hiring more staff, use space and supplies more efficiently, lower shipping costs, and prevent expensive mistakes.

• Faster warehouse throughput – Fulfill more orders per day with the same number of people.

• Higher accuracy – Virtually eliminate key entry errors, mis-picks, and mis-ships; reduce the number of returns.

• Better customer experience – Keep your delivery promise and ship the right items to the correct address, on time.

• Improved morale – Prevent warehouse problems, reduce overtime and workplace stress, and empower employees to meet performance goals.

Descartes offers integrated software solutions to automate ecommerce operations. Ready to look at some options?

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