The five love languages of demand planning on Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day shows up in red: red roses, red boxes, red hearts in every corner. But behind all that red isn’t just love. It’s pressure.

For demand planners, Valentine’s is one of the most compressed demand events of the year. Orders surge in hours. Preferences shift overnight. Customers expect everything to be in stock, delivered fast, and exactly right. Every forecast, shipment, decision has to land perfectly.

When demand turns red, real-time forecasts matter most. Just as love languages guide how people connect, machine learning guides how businesses plan.

1.    Receiving gifts

Gifts are signals. They show what someone values when it matters most. During Valentine’s, orders play the same role. 

Valentine’s spending has reached record levels in recent years, with billions spent on candy, flowers, and seasonal gifts in just a few short weeks, according to the National Retail Federation. For consumers, the holiday may feel spontaneous, driven by last-minute purchases and quick trips to the store. For retailers, that same behavior creates highly concentrated demand. Some locations sell out early while others lag behind. For planners, every order becomes a signal. Early purchases, browsing activity, and seasonal trends reveal where demand is forming and how quickly it is building. 

What seems like routine seasonal shopping quickly turns into uneven, fast-moving demand across categories, regions, and channels.

2.    Words of affirmation

Words influence behaviour. A well-timed message can change what someone does next. In the market, pricing, promotions, and availability send those signals.

To demand planners, pricing, promotions, and availability are those messages. If you want to win, you don’t just observe demand. You shape it.
Pricing, promotions, and availability determine when customers buy, how much they buy, and which products move first. When organizations make these decisions in isolation, demand concentrates into short windows that warehouses and transportation teams struggle to support.
To reduce that volatility, many organizations plan them together. Commercial and supply teams align campaigns with capacity and inventory before execution, shaping demand into what the network can support.

But none of it works without accurate, timely forecasts.

3.    Quality time

Quality time is about being present. Demand planning works the same way. You can’t rely on yesterday’s data to solve today’s problem.

Holiday demand rarely follows a steady pattern. By the time you compile reports, the moment to respond has already passed. Historical averages lag behind what customers are doing in real time. Insight turns into hindsight.

To close that gap, many organizations rely on machine learning forecasting. Instead of depending only on last year’s patterns, models continuously incorporate live signals such as point-of-sale data, promotions, holidays, and product attributes. Forecasts update as conditions change, giving planners a current view of demand rather than last week’s estimate. 

4.    Acts of service

Acts of service are about stepping in and helping when it matters most. In supply chains, execution is that service.

Even with accurate forecasts, real-world constraints still get in the way. Tariffs shift costs overnight. Suppliers miss deliveries. Ports slow down. Capacity tightens.

The challenge moves from prediction to execution. That’s where concurrent planning becomes critical. It allows teams to evaluate options concurrently and adjust plans in the moment, rerouting supply, reallocating inventory, and protecting service levels before disruptions ripple across the network.
Leading companies are already working this way. Mars is orchestrating its supply chain across functions to ensure that everyone stays aligned as conditions change. The result is faster responses, fewer crises, and plans that reflect what is happening now, helping the company to maintain its competitive edge. 

5.    Physical touch

Eventually, everything becomes tangible.

All of this planning, forecasting, and coordination ultimately serves one purpose. Turning the red of pressure into the red of romance, placing products into customers’ hands to see, touch, and feel on this special day.

Many Valentine’s staples such as flowers, strawberries, and chocolates are perishable and temperature-sensitive, often traveling thousands of miles before they reach shelves. When weather, port congestion, or transportation delays occur, it is not just a timing issue. Products spoil, inventory is lost, and teams must reroute at the last minute. This combination of perishability and global sourcing makes Valentine’s demand uniquely complex. But AI and machine learning will continue to evolve to help you respond faster and decide with confidence.

Kinaxis ML demand forecasting is built on Maestro™, the only end-to-end supply chain orchestration platform that infuses AI to enable faster, smarter supply chains that perform in complete harmony. Learn more here.