When you’re in the retail business, the Christmas season is like one great big game of chicken. The trick is to have enough stock on hand to go from Thanksgiving to Christmas without dropping a sale, pushing as hard as you can, and then having as close to zero inventory at midnight on New Years Eve as you can possibly manage. Why? Because the Christmas season is where you make your numbers for the year, but you’ve got to pay inventory tax on everything in your warehouse when the ball drops on December 31. That is, if you have a warehouse. If you’ve contracted out your fulfillment services, you don’t need to play that game.