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The day from last year that tells you when to raise your price this season
Find the exact day last season when you ran low on stock or calendar slots and demand still didn't drop, and use that as your date to raise the price this season.
By Yodai · Published on September 6, 2026 · Updated on October 12, 2026
Last year, at some point during your busy season, you ran low on stock or your schedule got almost full. And people kept asking anyway. That exact moment, not the one you remember off the top of your head, is the sign that your price was below what the market was willing to pay. If you'd had stock left over that same week, the read would be different: right price, right supply. But if you sold out and demand didn't get the memo, that's where your room to raise prices is.
If you know when your busy season started and how much you sold those weeks, you can pinpoint one specific spot on that calendar: the day your supply fell short and people kept asking anyway.
The sign you're looking for isn't 'sold out,' it's 'sold out and people kept coming'
Running out of stock doesn't always mean your price was too low. Sometimes it just means you ordered too little. The difference is in what happened after you ran short: if messages kept coming in those days, people asking you to put them on a waitlist in case something opened up, or asking about the next available slot, that's a real pricing signal. But if inquiries dropped off right along with your stock, that wasn't pent-up demand, it just meant you had nothing left to offer and people went elsewhere.
That's why the number you need isn't just 'which week did I run out,' but that week matched up with the requests you couldn't fill. That's where your date is.
- 1Check week by week
Pull the stock or open schedule slots for each week of last season, starting from the week it kicked off. - 2Mark the first big drop
Flag the first week when your stock or open availability fell below 10-15%. - 3Check that demand didn't drop along with it
See if messages kept coming in that same week, requests to put someone on a waitlist in case something opened up, or questions about the next available slot. If so, confirmed: there were more people willing to pay than you had room to sell to. - 4Count the days from the start
Work out how many days passed between the start of the season and that point. That number, not the calendar date, is what you carry over to this year.
- Applied in one move, without deciding slot by slot
- Risks raising the price on things that never really had demand
- Can scare off customers who only bought because it was the cheapest option
- The rest of the catalog or schedule stays as your entry-level draw
- You raise the price exactly where there was already a line, which is where sales take the smallest hit
- You can measure the effect on a single item before touching anything else
Which one to pick: Choose to raise only the time slot or product that sold out when you can clearly identify it, which is the usual case. Raise everything equally only if every single item truly ran out of stock or availability at the same time, something that pretty much only happens with very small catalogs.
- You've marked the exact day, counted from the start of the season, when you ran short on stock or availability last year without demand dropping
- You know how to tell that point apart from a simple 'I ran out' with no requests behind it
- You've translated that day into the specific date for this season
- You've decided whether the increase applies to everything or just to what sold out
- With this, in the next lesson you'll turn it all into a plan with a date and a number in every box