Season and high season on Ozon: preparing for the peak without drowning in stock

Eleven Russian-language videos on preparing for a season: Ozon’s own 11.11 / Black Friday webinar, its analytics training video, and independent sellers on warehousing, acceptance and stock. These are not official documents. Promo dates and mechanic names change every year: the calendar below is the 2023 high season, and tariffs belong to each video’s filming date.

When is the peak? November is not the only answer

The webinar’s frame: high season starts in November, with two key periods, 11.11 and Black Friday. On Ozon’s own numbers, big seasons lift a promo item’s sales threefold on average and fivefold in high season. Sixty per cent of what sold on Black Friday 2022 came from small sellers, 72% of 11.11 2022 sales came from the regions, and High Season 2022 brought 18 million new customers.

But November is not every product’s peak. Dima Khvan calls Q4 the most profitable stretch outright and claims the market grows fourfold in season. Roma Raid opens a video with “ninety days left until the October sales peak” (filmed July 2025): car bulb demand started around September and finished “even, I’d say, at the end of January.” In the Sell Monitor webinar a peak may last “three or four months, or just the single month of December” — New Year decorations in December, barbecues from early April, notebooks in August.

Ozon’s analytics video turns this into a decision: belt-bag demand is low from August to January then climbs steeply, annual revenue up 117%, so the call is not to drop the product — “I can simply supply less on schedule; last year demand started growing in January, so I will increase supply then.” Roma Raid warns that this year’s data does not exist yet, so you work from last year’s graph, and that platform growth is not seasonality. “As with any seasonal product, we are forced to guess.”

The 2023 calendar and discount mechanics

Ozon says it puts 2 billion ₽ behind each sale, targeting 100 million people. Discounts do not stack: an item sells at the deepest discount it qualifies for, and when one mechanic’s promo stock runs out it falls back to the next price. The discount comes off the median price of the last 30 days, excluding days spent in the previous period’s «супер хиты». The commission-discount variant takes 5 points off commission. The gate wants two of three: complaints under 10%, rating above 3, returns and non-collection under 10%. After the freeze you may not raise the promo price or cut promo stock, and FBS sellers ship seven days a week.

When and how the stock reaches the warehouse

The webinar’s most concrete instruction: for the November peak, FBO stock should be in the warehouse by 14 October, because as the season nears acceptance and placement get difficult. The incentive matches: litre bonuses are not credited for goods placed between 15 October and 15 November, so the recommended window is mid-September to 14 October. Katya Frolova gives it as a countdown: plan shipments two months out, distribute promo stock to local warehouses by cross-docking one month out, verify participation, price and stock two weeks out. Localisation matters because of that 72%, and home-warehouse goods get an extra lift in search.

Independent sources agree the goods must be live before the season: find where the curve starts rising, go back about a month, and source two to three months before that. Barbecues rise from early April, so the target is end of March; arrive late and competitors already hold reviews and organic traffic. Roma Raid’s secateurs reached him at the end of June, when turnover was already distributed — selling at a loss was what remained.

The real bottleneck is acceptance. Free acceptance requires one SKU per box: in one supply, delivery costs 242 ₽ and acceptance 0 ₽, but a second item type in the box raises acceptance to 65 ₽. Trust acceptance is cheapest and fastest but demands one type per box and leaves you unable to prove anything if goods go missing; piece-by-piece allows mixed loading and disputes — one example fell from 300 ₽ to 150 ₽, versus 0 ₽ with trust acceptance. Free regions allow next-day or same-day shipment; constrained ones slip a month out. The quota is harsher: a seller wants two SKUs and 40 units to Rostov, Ozon accepts 3 units of one SKU, Kazan about 30 of 40, Ekaterinburg 3. “What can you do? The answer is literally nothing.” The accepted volume shifts constantly — twenty minutes later it differs. One shortcut: «супертовары» status grants a 100% cross-docking discount, accelerated acceptance and more time slots; on 16 September its definition narrowed to «новинки» only, the first 28 days in sales, which that seller exploits by shipping one unit of each item first, then any volume free for 28 days.

Sizing the order

Turnover in days = stock on hand ÷ average daily sales, returns included; 100 units at 5 a day is about 20 days. The recommended band is 30–60 days, where goods rank higher and get extra platform support; above 100–200 days the marketplace may force a price cut or promo participation. Another trainer loads to 40 days (“broadly the ideal turnover”) and plans per SKU rather than per product family. The liquidity report under ФБО → Управление остатками shows current stock, 28-day average daily sales and estimated time to sell out.

First shipments go to Moscow and Piter, together roughly half of all orders; one seller puts about 40% of the assortment there and splits the rest by each cluster’s order share. The one seasonal correction is the buy-out rate: 35% in season, 31% out. To be honest about the gap, none of these videos gives a unit formula for a seasonal order.

After the peak: the dead stretch and the storage bill

Free storage differs sharply by category. As one seller lists it: oversized goods start paid storage 30 days after shipment, flammable 60 days, ordinary from 120 days, clothing and footwear 365 days. Money comes out daily, in small amounts: “you do not notice it, and then at the end of the period you realise there is no profit, it all went into storage.” His example: 3,000 puffer jackets shipped in August at 7 litres each, 1,200 sold, 1,800 carried over; the following August paid storage begins at 2.5 ₽ per litre, and he puts the ten-month bill for the 700 still left at “almost 3 million ₽” (the video never states the tariff’s unit). In the same dashboard, 38 of 151 SKUs sit in paid storage at 99,000 ₽ a month. Charges now stop from the day a removal request is filed.

But removal is usually not the answer. A brand owner loaded for Black Friday, loaded again for the February–March holidays, and rode the leftovers to 1 June. In May they paid about 700,000 ₽ a month; when the daily tariff took effect on 1 June, “the 700,000 turned into a 35 million monthly forecast.” They chose a hard clearance: “taking goods out of the warehouse is incomparably more expensive and slower than selling them.” The forecast fell to 1.5 million and their ABC “C” segment moved from FBO to FBS. The video does not say which year, and tariffs have moved since.

The danger right after the peak is mechanical: sales fall, turnover in days stretches, and the same stock quietly reclassifies as slow. Dead stock is defined as no sales for the last month, except seasonal goods out of season. The second trap is margin at year-end: promos arrive back to back and “sales exist but there is no margin at all.” For January the only statement we have is a brand owner’s — “there will be an off-season, and in January you go into the red.” None of these videos quantifies that drop.

In short

• The November peak lifts promo sales fivefold — but not every product peaks in November; read your category’s annual curve.
• Calendars and mechanic names change yearly: the dates here are 2023.
• List seasonal goods before the season starts; source two to three months ahead.
• Ozon’s instruction: FBO stock in the warehouse by 14 October for November; litre bonuses are not credited between 15 October and 15 November.
• The bottleneck is acceptance: one SKU per box buys free acceptance, slots can slip a month, and the quota can be a tenth of what you asked for.
• Target 30–60 days of turnover; above 100–200 days you risk a forced discount.
• Free storage is 365 days on clothing and 30 on oversized goods — clearing leftovers at a discount beats storing them, since removal is dearer and slower.