A marketplace festival sale runs on the platform’s calendar rather than the festival’s: enrolment closes weeks before the event, the enrolled price is locked while it runs, and the last safe dispatch date is a subtraction you do yourself.
When to give the Diwali order to the karigar, what actually sells on Dhanteras and Akshaya Tritiya, which months carry no wedding dates at all: those three sit with the Festival Stock Planner. It answers them today and says what to use until the planner itself is built.
An event reads a catalogue’s price, its stock count and its dispatch record all at once: everything in getting listed and staying listed, compressed into a few weeks.
The expensive decision comes before any of this: whether a piece can carry an event price at all once the returns it brings back are counted. Work that out on the RTO Loss Calculator before you accept a discount you cannot withdraw.
Why does a festival start earlier on the platform than in the shop?
Different people fix the two dates, in different months. The festival date is read off the panchang, the almanac these dates come from, and is known a year ahead; the event date is fixed by the marketplace and reaches you only when the event is announced to sellers.
Counting backwards from the festival morning is the karigar’s job, because the piece has to exist by then. The platform counts back from its own date, the event’s first day, since a listing has to be enrolled, priced and in stock before the event pages are built.
The two subtractions rarely land on the same date, which is how a shop that ordered its stock in good time still misses the sale by a fortnight: the enrolment window opened and shut while the metal was still at the bench.
| The question | The karigar’s calendar | The platform’s calendar |
|---|---|---|
| Who fixes the date | The panchang, a year ahead | The marketplace, per event, in the seller panel |
| What it counts back from | The festival morning | The event’s first day |
| Where the numbers come from | Bench days, the hallmarking queue, transit | The event terms, your own SLA line, your courier’s transit sheet |
| What missing it costs | Stock that lands after the buying is over | A week of event traffic your listing is not filtered into |
Where is the enrolment window announced, and what leaves a catalogue out?
Watch the seller panel and the seller email. Enrolment opens and closes on dates the platform publishes in those two places, weeks before the event itself runs. The notice still sat there when the panels were read in August 2026: none of the three big marketplaces announces a window on a page the public can see.
Four things commonly leave a jewellery catalogue out. The listing is not live, the stock count is below what the event asks for, the price sits above the reference the event measures a deal against, or the account’s fulfilment record falls short of the event’s entry bar. All four are a fortnight’s work before the window opens; an hour after it shuts they become next event’s work.
A blocked catalogue cannot be enrolled at all, so an image rejection three days before the window shuts costs you the whole event. The reason strings and the order to fix them in are in the guide on a rejected Meesho catalogue.
Missing the window leaves the listing exactly where it was, price and badge untouched, while the event pages are filtered to enrolled listings — so the catalogue spends the busiest week of the quarter trading against event prices without carrying one.
Miss that notice and nothing will tell you the window has closed.
Can I put the price back up once the sale has started?
A price accepted into an event is the price the event runs on, and panels that run price-locked events refuse an increase until it ends. Which kind yours is sits in that event’s own terms. Read them before you accept, because the answer changes from event to event and from platform to platform.
The cost that lasts past the week is the reference price. Where an event measures your deal against the lowest price your listing has carried across a recent look-back window, a deep discount now raises the bar the next event is judged on. The length of that window is stated in the event terms. Find it before you set the discount.
Working out a listing price that still clears your margin after the event discount is a sum. The Reverse Price Calculator does it from the profit you want in hand.
Parity is checked across platforms as well as inside one. On events that check it, the same piece listed cheaper elsewhere can drop the deal or reprice it. Set one event price for a SKU once, and carry that figure to all three marketplaces.
What does a missed dispatch SLA cost during a sale?
The dispatch clock starts when the order is confirmed, not when you open the panel. An event does not lengthen it. Some events ask for a shorter handling time than the one you normally declare, stated in the event terms. The ceiling for each order is the dispatch-by line on the order itself — that is where the panels still carried it in August 2026.
A breach on a jewellery catalogue costs more than the one order, because a platform-cancelled order in an event week is recorded against your account, whatever the courier’s part in it was. The metrics it moves are the same ones the next event’s entry bar reads.
What it costs in money reaches you later, on the settlement report, as a penalty or a compensation line. Look for it as a deduction on the report. Telling those apart from a fee and a tax is the job of the guide on a settlement that lands short.
An order you already know cannot ship — the piece is at the bench, or a stone has to be reset — is a decision for the first day of the window. Wait until the last, and you get the same cancellation with a breach on top.
Sale ka last dispatch date kaise nikale?
Start from the delivery promise on the listing — the date the parcel has to be delivered — and take five things off it, one belt at a time, because the subtraction comes out differently for every belt you ship to.
| What comes off the delivery date | Unit | Where your number is published |
|---|---|---|
| Transit for that pincode pair | Working days | Your courier’s own transit sheet for the zone |
| Days the network does not collect or deliver | Days | The courier’s festival-week notice, and your own weekly off |
| Your rider’s last pickup of the day | Clock time | Your pickup manifest, or the branch that serves you |
| Packing, checking and manifesting on your side | Hours | Your own bench, timed on an ordinary day |
| One working day held back | Day | Trade practice — sellers who dispatch daily usually keep one |
Whatever that subtraction gives you, the dispatch-by timestamp on each order is still a hard ceiling over it. Ship by whichever of the two falls earlier, and hold to it.
The belts to run it for: same city, within the state, metro to metro, rest of India, and the surcharged belt of Jammu & Kashmir, the North-East and the islands. The surcharged belt is where the cutoff falls earliest, and it is the one usually discovered late.
Which zone the pair falls in, what it costs and which carrier will cover a high declared value are the comparator’s questions.
When do an event’s returns land, and what should change before the next one?
A return window opens at delivery, which is why an event’s returns land in the weeks after it: the orders taken during the sale come back once the money has already been counted.
For that figure, your own panel is the only honest source: the courier-return share for the event weeks, read a month after the sale.
Divide those returns by what you shipped, then read the result against the rate at which a piece stops earning. The calculator below does it on your own numbers, and draws the breakeven line for the piece in front of you.
Two settings are worth changing while the event is still weeks off. The first is which pieces carry COD at all, set by price band: a low-ticket jhumka and a heavy chain do not survive the same return rate. Whether switching COD off leaves you ahead once the drop in orders is counted is answered on that calculator’s own page.
The second is the carrier and the cover on the high-value end of the catalogue. Settle both while the network is still quiet.
What should be left alone in the week of the sale?
Two kinds of edit cost more during an event than they save: anything that sends a listing back for review, and anything that changes the price or the stock count on a listing already enrolled.
The main image, the title and the category are the review triggers. A listing pulled for re-verification in the middle of an event comes back after the traffic has gone.
Leave the pickup address and the dispatch location alone for the same reason: the delivery promise on every open order was made against the old one.
New pieces added during an event do not inherit its visibility. Restock a design that sells out on the listing it already has.
What is worth writing down the day after, for next year?
The day after an event is when all of these dates are still in your head at once. Fill the sheet then.
Six lines in the order book cover it. Three from the enrolment: the day the notice arrived, the day the window shut, and the price you enrolled at with the reference it left behind. Three from afterwards: the last handover you actually made for each belt and whether it landed on time, the orders you cancelled and why, and the courier-return share for those weeks, filled in a month later.
A seventh line belongs to the bench: the date the karigar’s order should have gone out for whatever you ran out of. That is the date next year’s subtraction starts from, and the only line on the sheet a platform has no say in.
Start the sheet with the event that just ran. Open the order book, and put down the two lines you still remember: the day the enrolment notice came, and the day the window shut. The rest you can fill in as the returns land.