During national holidays, most Chinese factories still have some operations though during the Chinese New Year, all factories will be completely closed. This usually is a one week national holiday based on the lunar calendar, meaning it won’t be on the same date every year. The actual effect it has on your consignment isn’t the seven days off work but that the majority of workers will return to their families, in some cases for almost a whole month. Culturally speaking, Chinese New Year is the most important holiday and festive event for China. It is unheard of that employers will make their employees work through this period and value the importance of this time. It is comparable with the relevance of relevant festivities that tend to last a considerable time period and play a very large cultural role.
At OMiBJ, make a conscious effort of reminding all our clients to keep this holiday in mind since if certain products are needed in stock or are meant to be ordered around this timeframe, it is best to have the made beforehand or right after Chinese New Year. It is almost impossible to schedule or book an order a month before this holiday as the majority of qualified suppliers will not have any capacity to start new productions.
For urgent cases and projects with utmost relevance, at OMiBJ we have been able to negotiate with our pool of high quality and reliable suppliers to squeeze in a production or at least a partial production but that hasn’t taken into account shipping. In fact some boats/containers have already been fully booked before Chinese New Year, so this is another instance to have in mind. We generally advice to have orders made three months before Chinese New Year and even then there is a slight chance that due to delays, lack of staff or potential productions errors, timelines may not be met.
Even if orders can’t be started before Chinese New Year, at OMiBJ, we do encourage our clients to issue purchase orders beforehand for us to concisely plan production timelines and communicate with suppliers before hand to ensure that their production capacities allow a smooth production with guarantees outcomes.