On Friday, February 12th, 2024, many of us across the globe will be celebrating the year of the Chinese year of the Ox. Festivities and colorful displays will mark the beginning of this new period with decorations, family meals, and a firecracker or two!
But how will this important period in the Chinese calendar affect those of you with a dropshipping store?
Will there be delays in shipping? will factories be closed or stop taking orders? And how best should you prepare?
Let’s first start by hitting the short answer, before we delve a little deeper into how to prepare a dropshipping business for Chinese New Year.
How do I prepare my dropshipping business during Chinese New Year? To make sure your online dropshipping business runs as smoothly as possible, find out closing periods from all shipping and suppliers, respond to customer queries promptly, consider adding a banner to your website informing customers, and stockpile best-selling items.
So now we’ve seen the quick takeaway answer to enable you to start preparing right now! In order for you to understand a little more easily how Chinese New Year might affect service for your dropshipping store, let’s find out what Chinese New Year is.
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What is Chinese New Year?
Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival or Lunar New Year and marks the end of winter and the beginning of the spring season.
Festivities traditionally take place from Chinese New Year’s Eve, the evening before the first day of the year, right through to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year.
Source: britannica
New Moon
In 2024, the first day of the Chinese New Year will be on Friday, 12 February, which is the Year of the Ox. Chinese usually takes at least 7-8 days off, from February 11th to February 17th or February 18th.
So as you can see there will be plenty of festivities going on throughout this Chinese celebratory season. How will this potentially affect your dropshipping suppliers, products, and shipping and how can you make sure you keep your online store running smoothly throughout Chinese New Year?
“Chinese usually takes 7 days off from Chinese New Year’s eve till the 7th day after Chinese New Year.”
Read on to find out.
The effects of Chinese New Year my online dropshipping store
Chinese New Year date changes every year, and while the official holiday lasts for around 1 week, it is customary for most businesses to take a few days before and after the big day itself.
For factory workers, Chinese New Year is perhaps the only time of the year they going back hometown; factories usually give at least two weeks off, considering the rush traffic during Chinese New Year. This means that on average, your suppliers take at least two weeks off. So although there’s no need to shut your dropshipping store, there may be some delays during Chinese New Year that are crucial to understanding.
Production reduced A week or two before Chinese New Year, you might find that some suppliers slow down production. So this could mean that any orders received in those two weeks leading up to Chinese New Year, may be delayed.
Suppliers shut down for at least a week Generally, factories in China stop production one week before Lunar New Year and resume work one week afterward. You may also find that many factories might even take up to one month off.
Factories stop taking orders Factories usually stop taking orders at least 3 weeks before the Chinese New Year.
5 days off for domestic shipping carriers Some of the domestic shipping carriers in China are off for 5 days and usually won’t take delivery requests
Cross-border shipping this type of shipping will usually break for between 1 and 3 days during Chinese New Year
AliExpress resellers don’t hold stock During Chinese New Year It’s wise to avoid AliExpress dropshipping, as most AliExpress sellers are resellers and they don’t hold any form of stock inventory
Dropshipping agents are away for 7 days Most drop shipping agencies are off at least seven days. The warehouse staff may be around earlier, but certainly, the purchasing team, sales team, and account management teams will be on a break for at least 7 days
“You may also find that many factories might even take up to one month off.”
Ok so now we’ve seen some of the likely scenarios you will come across if you own an online dropshipping store during Chinese New Year. What can you do to make sure you are fully prepared?
Let’s discover more below.
Source: multi-drop
What you can do to prepare your dropshipping store for the Chinese New Year
Although the Chinese New Year does slow business down across China, if you’ve fully prepared for it and got some simple fixes in place, you can ride it like a boss!
Suppliers may be closed for a whole month and even those that aren’t shut for that length of time, it may take a week or two for full production to get going again in the new year.
Some suppliers may not return to full capacity until early March. Stocking up inventory and take advantage of the shipping system is your best choice (we will get to this in detail later).
Make sure you fully prepare
If your dropshipping enterprise either relies wholly on Chinese suppliers or even if any portion of your online dropshipping business relies on suppliers from China, you can get prepared.
The most important thing to remember is to ensure your communication with your customers is second to none, so they understand a delay might be possible and follow some of the other tips below to make sure your businesses are as robust as possible during this time.
So let’s find out below some of the ways we recommend you can prepare your online dropshipping store for the Chinese New Year season.
How do I prepare my dropshipping store for Chinese New Year?
Source: ReferralCandy
A good way of letting your customers know there may be delays is by updating the banner at the top of your homepage. Update the banner to say that you’re currently experiencing shipping delays and provide a link to where customers can find more information.
Contact your suppliers
Although experienced suppliers may reach out directly to you, you will need to contact all the suppliers you work with to understand how each of their processes works throughout the period.
Prepare a list of questions to ask them and do this as early as possible before the Chinese New Year.
Inform customers
Although if you give clear guidelines of timings, most people don’t mind waiting a little longer for their package as long they’re pre-warned.
However, customers generally don’t like and should have to wait too long for responses to their queries.
If your customers still have questions after you have given them any delay details. be sure to answer them as promptly as you can.
Source: fox
Stockpile
Although this seems counterproductive to your dropshipping model, it may be worth ordering a stock of your most popular products. As we discussed earlier, the production might be down for two weeks or more, but the logistics infrastructure will keep operating expect a short downtime of 3 days maximum.
By keeping stock with your dropshipping agent, you will be able to minimize the downtime and ship orders out as fast as possible. Here’s what you should do:
Plan ahead: Estimate your order volume during the Chinese New Year period (at least 1 week before Chinese New Year’s eve and 1 week after)
Get a quote and stock inventory: ask for a supplier for quotations on products, storage fee, shipping fee, and mysterious
Set up an agreement with your suppliers about fulfillment efficiency.
Shipping could be a bit more expensive, but it may just get you over the Chinese New Year hump and allow you to continue giving A star customer service!
It could also bring you additional customers due to the fact that other sellers cannot fulfill.
And finally…
We hope this article has helped you to get your online dropshipping store ready for the Chinese New Year Period.
The chief takeaway is early preparation. So make sure you get in touch with all suppliers so you can best understand their closing periods. With HyperSKU, the one-stop dropshipping platform, we take sellers’ businesses as a top priority and we’ve helped many sellers smoothly went through Chinese New Year.
