Western India Festive Apparel Demand: Q3/Q4 Planning Workbook

For apparel businesses selling into Western India, the second half of the calendar year is a chain of festivals: Raksha Bandhan, Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Dussehra, Diwali and the start of the wedding season. Each has its own product needs — chaniya cholis and kediyus for Garba, kurta sets and sarees for Diwali, occasion wear for weddings — and each moves on the calendar every year because most follow the lunar calendar.

This guide is a planning method, not a forecast. We do not publish demand numbers. The free workbook gives you a festival calendar with usual windows, a critical-path calculator that works back from each festival date, a category plan built from your own last-season data, and a weekly flow. You bring the numbers.

Why “Q3/Q4”?

In this guide Q3/Q4 means the calendar quarters July–September and October–December — the festive half of the year. In the Indian financial year that is Q2 and Q3. Use whichever your team uses, but be consistent between the plan and your accounts.

Step 1: Build this year's festival calendar

Festivals tied to the lunar calendar can shift by two to three weeks from one year to the next. Planning off last year's dates is the most common avoidable mistake. The calendar sheet lists the festivals that matter for Western India and the rest of the country with their usual windows — for example, Navratri and Dussehra usually fall between September and October, and Diwali between October and November. It deliberately leaves this year's dates blank: enter them from the official holiday list or a panchang.

• Western India focus: Ganesh Chaturthi (Maharashtra, Goa), Navratri and Garba (Gujarat, Mumbai), Dussehra, Diwali, the Gujarati New Year on the day after Diwali, Bhai Dooj.
• National occasions that still drive Western India sales: Raksha Bandhan, Karva Chauth (more North-led but present in Western India cities), Christmas.
• If you also sell in the East or South, add Durga Puja and Onam — the sheet includes both.
• Wedding muhurat dates are set by the panchang each year; many fall between November and February. Treat the wedding season as its own plan (see our wedding-season assortment guide).

Step 2: Work back to production dates

For each festival, the sheet asks for two lead times: how many weeks before the festival the goods should be in store or in your warehouse for online orders, and your production lead time from cutting to dispatch. It calculates the in-store date, the date production must start and the number of days left from today. For a festival that is the last week of the selling window (Navratri for chaniya cholis), the in-store date should be three to four weeks earlier — customers shop before the festival, not on it.

If the “days left to start production” is negative, you already know the plan needs a different route — buying finished goods, reducing options, or shifting the product to a later festival.

Step 3: Plan categories from your own history

The category plan sheet has one row per category and store cluster or channel. For each row, enter units sold in the same weeks last year — the weeks around the festival, not the calendar month — and the change you plan. Planned units and planned sales value calculate, with each row's share of the plan.

• Use last year's sales for the same festival weeks, aligned by festival date, not by month. If Diwali was in October last year and is in November this year, compare the Diwali weeks.
• Adjust for stock-outs. If a category sold out two weeks before the festival, last year's units understate demand — note it and plan with judgement.
• Separate channels. Marketplace, own website, wholesale and stores behave differently; plan them on separate rows.
• Plan the change by evidence you can name: new stores, a new channel, a price change, a category you are adding. If you cannot name the reason, keep the change small.

Step 4: Shape the weekly flow

The weekly flow sheet starts from an even split across 26 weeks as a neutral starting point (labelled illustrative) and lets you reshape the share of season units for each week. Shape it from your own weekly sales history around each festival — most brands see sales build in the weeks before a festival and fall immediately after. The cumulative column shows how much of the season's units you need in hand by each week, which becomes your receiving and dispatch plan.

Step 5: Turn the plan into a production schedule

1. For each category, split planned units by style and size (use the size-curve planner).
2. Check fabric and trims lead times against the “start production by” date.
3. Book capacity — in-house lines or job-work partners — for the weeks you need.
4. Plan replenishment: hold back part of the fabric or production slots for repeat orders on styles that sell through early.
5. Agree a markdown plan for after the festival before the season starts (see sell-through and markdown planning).

What to review weekly during the season

• Sell-through by style against plan, and weeks of cover.
• Styles to repeat (selling faster than plan with time left before the festival) and styles to stop.
• The next festival's critical path — the season is a chain, and delays carry forward.

If your production runs in Bebaak Loom, styles, costing, cutting and dispatch are already in one place, and StyleScope adds the research and trend-evidence side. See the Loom help guides for the factory floor.

Common mistakes

• Planning off last year's festival dates.
• Comparing calendar months instead of festival-aligned weeks.
• Ignoring stock-outs in last year's data.
• Committing the whole budget before the season, leaving nothing for repeats.