Series I. On how to make time schedule
More and more businessperson tends to buy from China to lower down purchasing cost. But lots of them don’t have any experience on importing. Compared with their buying from local wholesaler or distributor, buyers need to pay attention on many aspects. Among all the elements, how to make schedule is a very important course for new importers to learn. This article is specially for guiding new importers to reserve time if they decided to transfer their purchasing from local to China.
- Production Time
Usually Chinese suppliers start order preparation after they received your deposit. But it should be noted that production time is not simply counting from you paid the deposit. You also need confirm all production details when you make the payment. Take kitchen cabinets for example, you need confirm the design, dimensions, material, color, hardware, etc, with your supplier, as well as your supplier received the deposit, then factory would start to produce.
Attention, production time not equals to delivery time. Production time only refers to the time that supplier can finish the production for your order. After that supplier needs to prepare many process for shipment. 1: Booking shipping space, which is normally taking one week. 2: Apply customs declare. 3: As per China policy, furniture (wood furniture) needs commodity inspection which needs 1-2 days. 4: For goods (Like countertop) in solid wood packing, packing needs to arrange fumigation which needs 1-2days. All those preparation at least needs 7 days before your goods could be hand over to shipping forwarder.
- Holiday Influence
Chinese holiday will influence a lot on delivery of your goods.
- All forwarder company, shipping company and customs authorities do not work on weekend and holiday while factory normally work on holiday and weekend. So before long time holiday like Chinese National Day Holiday (1st to 7th of Oct), you need to prepare shipping space at least 2 weeks ahead if you want to ship goods before the holiday.
- Chinese Spring Festival (Chinese new year holiday, each year in different time according to Chinese lunar calendar) has 7 days office holiday. But Chinese factories usually have around 1 month holiday, normally from middle of January to end of February. So if your goods is plan to ship before Chinese Spring Festival, you need to order in November. If you order in December, January, mostly you goods will be shipped at the end of March or April.
- Shipping Time
After your goods are boarded on vessel, it also needs time to ship to your country. Some are in fast vessel while some are relatively slower route. So you’d better to check with the forwarder for shipping time when you book shipping space. Normally from China to USA needs around 20-30days while China to Australia around 20 days. You can also get more precise time by checking with destination sea port.