Miss the Sailing by Ten Days and the Stock Is Worth Half

The Calendar Runs Backwards

Seasonal buying inverts the usual order of a purchase. Ordinary goods are ordered when the buyer needs stock. Seasonal goods are ordered against a date on a retail calendar, and everything upstream has to fit inside the interval between the deposit and that date.

The chain, from the retail end: stock on shelf by a date; delivery to the retailer's distribution centre one to three weeks before that; clearance and inland delivery one to two weeks before that; arrival at the destination port two to three weeks before that; sailing five to seven weeks before that, from Asia to Europe or the US East Coast; cargo ready at the port one week before the sailing; production four to ten weeks before that; order placed and deposit paid before production starts.

Add it up and a Christmas programme needs to be on a vessel in August or September. A Halloween programme needs to sail in July. A back-to-school programme in June. The fair happens in October and November, which is why the fair is where buyers commit for the following year rather than for the coming season.

Buyers who arrive at the fair in October looking for this year's Christmas stock are eight months late, and the only route left is air freight at several times the cost.

What the Fair Date Actually Anchors

The autumn session sits at the moment when next year's product decisions are made, and the timing is not accidental.

Phase 1 covers electronics, appliances, machinery and hardware. Phase 2 covers building materials, furniture, garden and consumer goods. Phase 3 covers textiles, footwear, bags, food and cases. A buyer attending all three phases in late October and early November has seen the whole range within a fortnight and can place a programme for the following autumn.

That produces a rhythm worth planning around: produce in the first half of the year when factory capacity is available and rates are lower, ship in the third quarter ahead of the peak, sell in the fourth. Buyers who compress that into the fourth quarter compete for capacity with everyone else and pay peak rates for the privilege.

The fair is also where the schedule gets discussed with the factory directly. A production slot agreed in November for a March completion is a slot the factory has planned for. The same order placed in May is a slot the factory has to find.

Two Holidays That Move the Whole Year

China's manufacturing calendar is set by two closures, and both have to be in the calculation rather than discovered in it.

Chinese New Year. In 2027 the holiday falls on 6 February. Factories typically stop one to two weeks before the date and restart one to three weeks after, as workers travel home and return on their own schedule. The effective standstill runs four to six weeks, and it is longer for factories that depend on migrant labour from distant provinces. Production booked to finish in late January is production that has to be finished, inspected and trucked before the holiday, not during it.

National Day, 1 to 7 October. Shorter, but it lands in the middle of the peak shipping window, and trucking and port operations slow down around it.

The consequence for a seasonal order is a single rule: the completion date has to be set against the holiday, not against the sailing date. An order due to complete in the week before Chinese New Year will complete in the week after it, and no clause changes that.

Holiday dates above are the published dates for 2027. Factory closures vary by region and by company, and the actual standstill should be confirmed with the supplier.

Peak Season and the Surcharge

From roughly July to October, capacity out of Asia tightens and rates rise. The mechanism is straightforward: holiday stock for North America and Europe moves in the same window, carriers allocate capacity to the highest-yielding contracts, and spot rates climb. Port congestion amplifies it, because a vessel waiting at anchor is capacity that is not sailing.

For seasonal goods this produces two failures at once. The rate rises, and the schedule becomes less reliable, which is worse. A booking confirmed for a sailing that is later rolled to the next vessel turns a five-week transit into a seven-week one, and the retail date does not move.

• Book early. Space booked in June for an August sailing is priced and confirmed differently from space requested in August.
• Build slack into the retail date. Two weeks of buffer on a seasonal programme is not caution, it is the working assumption.
• Watch the cut-off, not the sailing date. The cargo has to be at the terminal before the gate closes, which is days before the vessel loads.
• Have a second routing. A different port pair or a different carrier is worth knowing before the first booking is rolled, not after.

The surcharges are quoted per container and change weekly. Treat any figure as indicative and confirm at the time of booking.

Air Freight as a Rescue, Priced Honestly

When a seasonal programme is going to miss its date, air freight is the instrument, and it should be understood as a loss-limiting measure rather than a solution.

Air typically costs three to five times sea per kilo on the same lane, before the peak surcharges that also apply to air in the fourth quarter. For a promotional item with a low unit value and a high volume, the arithmetic often says the goods cannot fly at all: the air cost exceeds the value of the stock, and the correct decision is to write down the inventory rather than move it.

Where air does work: high value per kilo, a hard contractual delivery date with penalties, a launch where the marketing spend already committed exceeds the freight, or a partial shipment that keeps a retail listing alive while the balance travels by sea.

The partial shipment is the option most buyers miss. Sending twenty percent by air to cover the first weeks of a season, with the balance on the water, often costs less than either all-air or all-late, and it keeps the shelf full while the container catches up.

What to Put in the Order

A seasonal order needs four clauses that an ordinary order can live without.

• A ship window, not a ship date. Cargo ready by a date, with the sailing to be booked within a stated week.
• A late-delivery consequence. A discount, a right to cancel, or an obligation to air-freight at the supplier's cost. Any of these works; none of them works if it is not written.
• Partial shipment allowed. So that part of the order can move early rather than all of it moving late.
• Production completion before the holiday. Stated as a date, agreed against the Chinese New Year or National Day calendar, not against the sailing.

The commercial detail behind all four is who carries the risk of a missed season. A supplier who accepts a late-delivery clause prices it in, which is the honest outcome: the risk has a cost and somebody pays it. A supplier who refuses the clause has told you where the risk sits.

The Cost of Arriving Late

Seasonal stock loses value on a curve rather than a step. Arriving two weeks late into a twelve-week season means selling at full price for ten weeks instead of twelve. Arriving after the season means storage until next year, at which point the design is a year old and the promotional calendar has moved on.

Three costs accumulate, and only one of them appears on a freight invoice.

Markdown. The discount needed to clear stock in the remaining window. On seasonal goods this is the largest number and the least visible.

Storage. Warehousing for eleven months, often at rates that exceed the margin on the goods.

Obsolescence. Next year's design is already being sourced at the fair while last year's sits in a rack. A promotional item rarely recovers.

Set against those, the difference between a June booking and an August booking is trivial. That comparison is the argument for planning the calendar at the fair rather than at the freight desk.

What to Settle at the Stand

Four questions, all about dates rather than prices.

• What is your production lead time in units per week, and what is it in the four weeks before Chinese New Year.
• When does your factory stop and restart for the holiday, and when do your main material suppliers stop.
• Can you complete a first partial shipment by a date six weeks before the main order.
• Which of your other customers ship in the same window, and will my order compete with theirs for capacity.

The last question is the one that produces useful information. A factory that supplies three large seasonal buyers already knows it will be at capacity in June, and will say so. A factory that says yes to everything in June has either spare capacity or an unrealistic view of its own floor.

Write the answers down and put them in the purchase order as dates. A lead time that stays in a notebook is a lead time that becomes an excuse in April.

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