School may still be out for summer, but you don’t have that luxury as a retailer. Back-to-school is the second-largest retail event of the year—right behind the winter holidays—so there’s no time to sunbathe.
Despite recent market volatility, back-to-school spending in the US is expected to hit nearly $50 billion in 2025, according to eMarketer. Although a big number, growth is slowing a bit compared to past years.
Still, whether it’s preschoolers or college students, parents, teachers and kids alike are looking to bring some excitement and joy to what is often a stressful time of year. September marks a fresh start, and as a retailer, you’re in a great position to meet that energy.
There are plenty of practical tips and tricks to help you stay ahead during this high-traffic season.
- Prepare your inventory for organized chaos
- Flesh out your social media and marketing campaign
- Streamline your omnichannel shopping experience
- Develop exciting discounts and promotions that catch shoppers’ attention
- Be ready for anything amid global uncertainties
Master the seasonal rush
Streamline your inventory, elevate your marketing strategy and stay agile amidst high-traffic events with Lightspeed.
Back-to-school inventory management
The back-to-school environment often involves a bit of chaos with all kinds of consumers (parents, students, teachers, educators) crossing things off their lists. If they find items out of stock, they’re likely to move on quickly to the next store.
Balancing stock levels
One of your top priorities should be maintaining a well-organized and well-managed inventory. But be careful, this doesn’t mean overstocking. While keeping shelves full helps avoid missed sales, overstocking can lead to excess inventory and dead stock, which ultimately hurts your profitability.
For example, a school store must be fully prepared for the summer and early fall rush. However, they can’t afford to overstock because you risk holding inventory all year. This is especially true for academic books required for specific classes and for annual merch. These items change annually, so ordering too many may leave you with unsellable products that take up valuable space.
Implementing inventory management tools
Automated inventory management systems are always important, but they become absolutely essential during high-traffic periods like back-to-school shopping.
First, make sure you’re using a system with a centralized hub. This allows you to easily track orders across all channels, helping you maintain tight control over inventory and develop a complete picture of your order needs.
Lightspeed’s inventory management system is a powerful tool for retailers looking to streamline their stock. It also helps anticipate needs and make informed decisions, especially during busy seasons.
Beyond showing what’s in stock, the system speeds up the ordering process. You can preorder inventory in seconds using built-in purchase orders, set reorder points and activate low stock alerts to stay ahead of inventory demands.
Staying on top of your data
Even if some patterns appear obvious, it’s critical to build your inventory based on real data rather than guesswork.
With Lightspeed Insights, you can easily view estimated sales and out-of-stock periods to keep your best-selling items available. This is especially important during back-to-school season, when you need to perform your best with the most customer attention on your store.
You can also forecast inventory demand by reviewing order recommendations for popular back-to-school items or by looking back at last year’s data. This helps you maintain optimal stock levels and avoid missing sales opportunities.
Your marketing plan for back-to-school success
Marketing for a back-to-school campaign has the potential to be fun, creative and highly engaging. For most retailers, this is a major moment in the year, making it a great opportunity to connect with customers and stand out.
Market research
By exploring the broader market and industry trends, you’ll gain a better understanding of consumer behavior during the back-to-school season. Look at what your competitors and other inspiring brands are doing or have done in the past.
For example, if you’re an electronics company, take a look at industry leaders like Google. They run strong back-to-school campaigns every year that really highlight the key pain points parents and kids face. See if there’s anything you can incorporate or build on from their approach.
In 2024, Macy’s took a fun, simple and creative approach to showcasing their apparel by centering an ad around first-day-of-school pictures.
This research can help you build a creative framework, spark new ideas and clarify what works for your brand and what doesn’t.
Timing your marketing campaign
You want to cast a wide net with your marketing plan, so it’s smart to start talking about back-to-school at the beginning of summer. In fact, the timeline is shifting even earlier. According to StackAdapt, in 2024, 66% of back-to-school spending was expected to occur by the end of July, up from 59% in 2023.
- July to early August: It may still feel like the middle of summer, but this is a prime time to roll out the marketing plans you’ve been preparing. It’s your window to make a strong push toward your core audience—those who like to plan ahead. Think teachers, parents and students eager to get everything they need for a successful year.
- Mid August-Early September: Here’s where you target the procrastinators. Focus your marketing on convenience, fast delivery and efficiency. Highlight how your store can help them get what they need quickly and stress-free.
Timing by product type
Not all back-to-school items follow the same shopping timeline. School supplies and clothing are often bought earlier, while electronics and accessories are typically purchased closer to the start of the school year.
Personalize your marketing
Leverage your customer demographic data to personalize and segment your marketing emails and messages. This could include adding product recommendations or exclusive deals tailored to specific groups within your customer base.
For example, you might highlight classroom essentials for teachers, trendy apparel for teens or time-saving bundles for busy parents.
In this back-to-school ad clearly targeted at teachers, Microsoft met its audience where they were during the 2022 pandemic, making them feel heard by acknowledging the challenges of online teaching and highlighting ways to better support virtual classrooms.
Social media planning
Make sure your social media plan is well-developed. During this busy season, feeds are saturated with posts, so your content needs to stand out and stay above the fold.
You should understand which social media platforms draw in which demographics. Here are the primary age groups for each social media platform, based on Sprout Social’s 2025 Social Media Demographics Report:
| Social media | Age |
| 25–34 years | |
| 18–24 years | |
| Youtube | 18–29 years |
| Tiktok | 18–24 years |
As with any social media strategy, take the time to understand the different demographics on each platform. Jump on trends, but don’t be afraid to add your own twist. Tailoring your message accordingly will make your efforts more effective.
Another key is to stay as relatable as possible and use real-life examples. Take Amazon. They partnered with of-the-moment comedian Michelle Buteau, who created a lighthearted, funny video about saving money on her kids’ back-to-school needs.
Influencer marketing
Today, influencers and celebrities have close relationships with their followers, which gives them significant power to shape back-to-school shopping habits.
Think of a Gen Alpha influencer doing an unboxing of what’s in their bag for the first day of school, or showcasing their outfits for the first week. These videos draw in large audiences of young viewers eager to see what their favorite personalities are wearing or using to start the school year off right. This is especially true for the apparel industry.
Recently, there has been a major surge in back-to-school content on TikTok. According to Vogue, in 2024, over 13,000 videos using the hashtag #backtoschoolhaul were posted in a single week—a 47% increase from the previous year.
When you find the right influencer for your brand, the impact can be significant—especially with micro-influencers, who often have a more personal and trusted connection with their audience. Their content tends to feel authentic, helping drive meaningful engagement with your brand.
Omnichannel selling
There are many benefits to being an omnichannel retailer—from better brand awareness and discoverability to unified sales, increased customer lifetime value and more.
Seamless selling across all platforms
When it comes to a large marketing event like back-to-school, you need to ensure your omnichannel platforms are consistent and prepared for the rush. This means your branding, marketing and sales messaging should all follow a cohesive online and offline approach that helps customers get to know your brand and understand who you are.
A shoe store is a great example of a business that would benefit from going omnichannel. According to an FDRA survey, consumers tend to prefer buying shoes in person both for sizing and instant gratification, although they like to surf the web and look at shoes online before making a decision.
Another key asset for retailers is offering multiple fulfillment options like BOPIS (aka click and collect), retail lockers, online reservations, curbside pickup and local delivery. These options help keep shipping costs low and encourage customers to shop further in store.
Operational efficiency with smart tools
To thrive in an omnichannel environment, your technology needs to be fast, efficient, intuitive and integrated. Your staff needs to understand how to use it, and you need to make sure it all lives on one centralized POS system.
Lightspeed POS streamlines retail operations with real-time inventory tracking, customer insights and fast checkout during busy periods like back to school. Lightspeed Scanner can also accelerate the checkout process even more through mobile point of sale.
Discounts and promos can make or break your back-to-school push
With the current economic climate, more shoppers are hunting for deals, especially on bigger-ticket items like electronics. According to Deloitte’s survey, 67% of parents are willing to switch brands if prices are too high.
Lightspeed makes offering a variety of discounts simple. You can build in automatic discounts that apply at checkout or share discount codes via email, social media or printed materials for customers to enter at checkout.
You can also schedule promotions to run discounts at specific times based on your marketing strategy, ensuring they’re applied consistently and automatically. Bundling products creates added value during high-volume shopping periods.
For example, Apple has done key back-to-school promotions over the years. One offered qualifying higher-education students a free or discounted pair of Beats headphones with the purchase of an eligible Mac or iPad Pro. In 2021, they gave away AirPods with Macs or iPads, encouraging students and parents to wait for back-to-school deals and not miss out on these bundles.
You don’t have to go that big—even 10% off for teachers or free shipping can attract attention during back-to-school shopping.
Loyalty programs stand out during high-traffic periods
Back-to-school shopping can be overwhelming, but when customers know where to go and already have loyalty points saved up, it gives them a clear starting point. Loyalty programs help build lasting relationships and trust in a saturated market.
Lightspeed’s built-in loyalty program is seamless, card-free and requires no third-party integrations. Customers earn and redeem points whether they shop in-store or online. The platform also makes it simple to track activity and run targeted marketing campaigns, including email and SMS promotions, birthday specials, abandoned-cart reminders and behavior-based offers.
How tariffs and global uncertainty may affect your back-to-school retail plan
With the unpredictability of the global economy, key retail periods like back-to-school shopping may be affected. It’s important to consider how this may impact your sales and be prepared to adjust your plan accordingly.
Adjust your ordering
With rising costs and uncertain futures, finding the products you need for back-to-school could become more difficult. One key tip is to diversify your supplier base so you’re not relying on just one partner to supply all your key items. This is a safer way to work with your wholesale network and protect your margins.
With Lightspeed NuORDER, you can work seamlessly with a whole network of B2B brands. This platform helps you stay stocked with seamless purchasing and quick views of entire online catalogs. Integrated right into your POS, it connects to your inventory ordering so everything stays in a central hub.
Communicate with your customers
One thing’s for sure: you should communicate clearly with your customers with good or bad news. If prices need to go up because you have no other choice or if there are last-minute stockouts, be sure to explain why. This transparency can go a long way, especially with loyal customers.
Macy’s decided to address the tariff question head on and keep their communication clear in their fourth quarter 2024 earnings conference call. “We have worked hard to create a flexible supply chain that allows us to mitigate the impact from potential disruptions to global trade and tariff activity,” says CFO Adrian Mitchell.
Bottom line
Winning the back-to-school rush means mastering inventory, marketing and omnichannel selling while staying flexible and customer-focused.
By using real data, planning ahead and adapting quickly, retailers can turn this hectic season into a major opportunity and keep shoppers coming back year after year.
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