Summary

By: Hermann Zsuzsanna Date: 2023. 12. 07. 08:54

Here I am again, writing the last article of the year. The year has gone by so quickly that it was almost yesterday that we were looking at how interesting it was to have customers in the shops in January, and not just a few of them… Then so many things happened, and for a few months we have been already planning for next year, trying to anticipate what next January and February will be like… Many of us are making plans anxiously, as it is basically becoming a habit to worry about something all the time. We are unsure whether to go this way or that way, even though we had to be able to put down numbers on the big planning sheets, in the excel cells, and then say this is the plan for 2024.

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2023/12-01

Not so long ago, at our Business Days conference at the end of September, we had three scenarios: let’s just make it to the end of the year and then it will be better; let’s just make it to next June and then it will be better; let’s just make it to next year and then 2025 will be better. Yes, these are three very different plans even if everyone who was there is working in the same market, and you could say that they are planning for the same customer wallet. And then as we are going forward, the “fog” slowly lifts and we start to see more and more of what lies ahead. Then comes Christmas, which brings something surprising to everyone each year. Yet at Christmas things somehow fall into place. We straighten out the curves and rejoice in what is and how it is.

Of course, the uncertainty returns at the beginning of January, as it always does and then everything starts all over again. The worrying, the planning and replanning, and the hoping. We get on the rollercoaster ride that will take us through the year again, when the Christmas miracle returns, when – irrespective of what the year has been like – we take a moment to come to terms with it, accept it, and with that momentum we enter the new year.

I have high hopes for next year, believing that the rollercoaster will go up after all, we will have more positive experiences than negative ones, and we will be able to reconcile with the results easily in that special Christmas moment.

Thank you dear readers and partners for your unfailing loyalty to us and I hope that you will continue to believe in us. I wish us all a kind of new year that we would like to have and that every year ahead of us will be better than the ones we have left behind!

Best regards,

Zsuzsanna Hermann, Editor in Chief

Tags: , Trade magazin 2023/12-01