Ramadan volume is front loaded and it falls off a cliff in the last week. Buying it as one order is how shops end up holding flour in June.
Ramadan is the month most island shops make their year on, and it is also the month that leaves shops holding stock they cannot sell until the following year.
The pattern is very consistent in our order books. The fortnight before and the first two weeks are heavy. The last week collapses, because households have what they need and are spending on other things. Then the two weeks after are the quietest of the year.
A shop that buys the whole month in one order buys at the level of the first fortnight and pays for it in the last. So order it in two, and leave the second one open.
Send roughly two thirds ahead of time, weighted towards the things that always go: flour, sugar, oil, milk powder, dates if you stock them, powdered drinks, and cooking essentials. Then send a second, smaller load about ten days in, decided by what has actually sold. Every year that second load is different from the plan. Last year almost every shop we did this with ended up ordering less flour and considerably more cooking oil than they had expected.
Watch three specific traps.
The first is anything with a short date. A carton of something with three months on it, bought in quantity for Ramadan, is a write off in the quiet weeks that follow. Ask for the dates before you commit and we will tell you.
The second is cold drinks and bottled water. Both are bulky, the freight is high, and the price your island will pay is fixed by what everybody else charges. Work out your margin after freight before you order a pallet of it.
The third is your credit. This is the month wholesalers extend limits and it is the month shops most regret using them. If your account limit would take you three weeks to earn back in a normal month, do not fill it in Ramadan.
Book your boat space early. Every shop in your atoll is ordering in the same fortnight and the cargo boats fill. We plan our own Ramadan loading six weeks out and we will tell you which sailing you are on when we confirm the order, not the day before.
And order the quiet fortnight afterwards deliberately, small and cheap. The shops that struggle in the month after Ramadan are usually the ones who did not order at all and ran out of ordinary things.
