January Offers That Clear Holiday Stock

December ends, the leftover stock does not. A January sales strategy starts from two facts: demand drops after the holidays, and the stock you ordered for the holidays is still on your shelf. This guide puts a government number on the drop, shows how to decide which stock to clear first from your own sell-through, and builds a volume offer for the stock that needs it. It ends with the January dates you can plan around.

The dip, in the government's data

The Census Bureau publishes estimated monthly sales by kind of business. In its file of monthly estimates, not adjusted for seasonal variation, the line for NAICS 4541, electronic shopping and mail-order houses, shows these figures, in millions of dollars:

From December 2024 to January 2025 the line fell by 35,509 million dollars, or 27.0 percent. From December 2025 to January 2026 it fell by 39,321 million, or 28.2 percent. The broader nonstore retailers line, NAICS 454, fell 26.3 percent over the same latest pair, from 147,951 million to 109,039 million.

Read these carefully. They are unadjusted dollar totals for businesses with paid employees, and the Census notes that the estimates are not adjusted for price changes. They describe an industry, not your store, and they do not say how any single offer would perform. What they do say is that the drop from December to January has been large in two consecutive years, and that a store whose January sales fall by about a quarter is moving with the industry line, not failing. Plan the month against a lower baseline, and decide in advance how much of the stock you want gone by February.

What to clear first

Clear in this order. The order is our planning advice, not a rule.

1. Holiday-specific stock. Anything with a date, a season or a holiday on the packaging loses value fastest. Clear it first.
2. Slow sellers. Items whose sell-through was weak even during the peak.
3. Everything else, which you can sell at full price.

You need sell-through to do this. Shopify's Help Center describes a Products by sell-through rate report that shows what percentage of your inventory you sold during the selected period. It defines the rate as the total quantity sold divided by the total quantity sold plus the quantity still in inventory. The page notes that historical data for inventory-based metrics goes back only to October 1, 2023, and that the most recent period the report can return is approximately two days before the current date. The page does not state which plans include which report, so check your admin.

Here is the method on five example products, with sell-through for the last four weeks computed as sold ÷ (sold + on hand). All numbers are assumptions.

The rule used here: holiday-specific items under 50 percent go first, then everyday items under 20 percent. Your cutoffs will differ.

A volume offer for the stock that needs it

For products you bought in depth, a volume ladder moves more units per order and keeps the headline price intact. Take the stocking-stuffer pack. It sells for 12 dollars and its landed cost is 5 dollars.

Now check whether the ladder can do the job. There are 410 packs on hand. Clearing them in four weeks means about 102 a week. The last four weeks sold 90 in total, about 22 a week at full price. The ladder would have to multiply weekly sales by about 4.6, and no tier in the table promises that. Set a realistic target: clear half, and plan to bundle or hold the rest for next season. Never discount below your landed cost to hit a number, and read Discount Margin Floor before setting the deepest tier.

If you show a "was" price next to the new one, the FTC's guide on former price comparisons (16 CFR 233.1) says the former price should be the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time. A price you never charged is not a former price. This is not legal advice.

Returns and exchange season

January is also when holiday gifts come back. A refund gives up the whole sale, and an exchange keeps part of it. As planning advice, not a platform rule, offer a small bonus on exchanges that you can afford.

Assume a 50-dollar item with a 50 percent margin, so 25 dollars of contribution. A refund returns the 50 dollars and loses the 25. An exchange for another item at the same price keeps the 25. If you add a 5-dollar bonus for choosing the exchange, you still keep 20 dollars of contribution before handling, which is better than zero. The bonus has to be smaller than the contribution at risk.

Gift card holders

Gift cards bought in December are often spent in January. A card is not new demand, but the holder is a shopper who has already decided to buy from you. A threshold gift that applies to everyone, visible in the cart, can lift the order without touching the price. Put the offer in the email that goes with a gift card, and cap the stock.

The January dates

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management lists the 2027 federal holidays. In January, New Year's Day falls on Friday, January 1, and the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, January 18. That gives a three-day weekend, January 16 to 18, which suits a short offer. The next federal holiday, Washington's Birthday, is February 15.

Stores that buy at January trade markets can see how one is planned on our Atlanta page. For the rest of the season, see the holiday offer calendar, and use discount fatigue to decide how long a January offer should run before it trains shoppers to wait for the next one.

Build the offer

Build the ladder with the Volume discount template in Freebies Engine by Log Studio Lab, described as "The more shoppers buy, the less each costs." Set the tiers from your own contribution table, limit the offer to the products you chose and schedule an end date. Our guide to volume discounts on Shopify covers the setup in detail. Review sell-through again after two weeks and move any product that cleared out of the offer.