Field note
Tet buy notes from a quiet sitting
2025-09-18
A gift-set merchant in central Vietnam asked us to sit with the incoming Tet assortment. They had already approved a mood board heavy on crimson boxes. The warehouse still held last year's crimson boxes in two sizes.
We laid last year's sell-through next to the leftover photos. The smaller box had moved. The larger box had been returned for 'too much empty space inside.' The new buy repeated the large box because it photographed well on a table.
The sitting cut the large box from the primary buy and moved that volume into the small set plus a loose tea tin that had quietly sold through in December. Conversion after launch is still a later chapter; the catalog decision happened in a quiet room with leftover cartons on the floor.
Seasonal conversion analysis is half memory. Bring the units that did not leave, not only the campaign stills.