How to Prepare for The Chinese New Year Shutdown 2025?

What Should You Prepare Now?

With the uncertainties and force majeure factors, what preparations can you make now to avoid or minimize the potential impact of the Chinese New Year shutdown on your supply chains? Based on our experiences, we have summarized the following tips for you.

Plan Early

A comprehensive plan is required to set your business smoothly for the next two months. It includes your marketing plans, sales plans of your products, inventory planning, and other plans to deal with emergencies. 

You can consider appropriately reducing your advertising budget during the Spring Festival to avoid sudden order volume increases that may cause stockouts and delivery delays. It is recommended to plan and prepare some inventory for the products you are selling based on your estimated sales volume for at least one month. 

Communicate with Your Supplier

Close communication with your supplier can help you respond to shortages, delays, or any other potential problems throughout the Spring Festival in a more timely manner. The first thing you should do with your supplier now is to confirm the available inventory and shutdown time of the product manufacturer. If your products are already out of stock and stop production, then you should look for alternatives as soon as possible!

At this time, working with private suppliers will be risky as they usually stop accepting orders early before holidays. It is recommended to work with trustworthy China sourcing agent platforms like SourcinBox, who have extensive experience in dealing with Chinese New Year shutdowns.

If you are working with SourcinBox now, it’s time to communicate with your customer manager about your sales plan and inventory needs. And don’t be too stressed out about product shortages, there’s still a chance we can help you find alternative manufacturers to save your business. Just to be sure, it's a good idea to plan some inventory ahead of time.

Prepare Inventory in Advance

If you have a sufficient budget, you can purchase an appropriate amount of products in advance from the manufacturer as inventory. And finding a sourcing agent who can hold inventory for you in China during the CNY shutdown will be necessary. Remember that your inventory planning should include your current products as well as what you plan to sell in February(after the Spring Festival).

For SourcinBox users, after confirming with your customer manager, you can then easily pre-purchase the inventory you need on our app. We will source the corresponding quantity of products from the manufacturer and store them in our warehouse for free after checking the quality. And our warehouse will be operational until the last minute before the holidays to process your orders and resume working early before the holidays end to ensure as timely shipping as possible.

Consider Alternative Shipping Options

Most shipping companies will only take a short off for the Spring Festival to cope with the continuous demand for orders. Since there may be manpower shortages before and after the holidays, the shipping capacity will be limited. It is recommended to consider alternative shipping options and increase the budget for shipping, which is important to avoid delays and gain the trust of your customers.

On SourcinBox, there will still be available cost-effective shipping options during the holidays, you can keep in touch with your customer manager to learn about what shipping methods you can use as the holidays approach and make necessary adjustments.

Strengthen Your Customer Support

During the special period of the Chinese New Year shutdown, it greatly counts to strengthen customer service. When facing increasing customer issues, timely and effective solutions can reduce bad reviews and refunds at the root as well as increase store credibility. Besides, you can provide clear return and refund policies and after-sales support contact information in the store to deal with customer problems on time and also improve customer satisfaction and retention.

Of course, keep a close eye on the status of your orders by keeping a close contact with your suppliers. Provide timely feedback to your customers for out-of-stock and shipping delays. For unavoidable situations, remember to change the inventory information, shipping method, and delivery timeliness displayed in your store in advance. Notification via email or social media to your customers with a sincere apology can win you more favors.

Let SourcinBox Take Care of Your Supply Chain

In preparing for potential problems during Chinese New Year 2025, please keep in touch with your customer manager for timely solutions. You can also keep an eye out for our latest notifications on various platforms which will update with the latest information. We'll respond to you as soon as possible and help out with any concerning issues even during the holidays. 

We sincerely hope this article can give a hand to businesses sourcing from China. Plan ahead can effectively avoid possible losses caused by supply chain disruptions and shipping delays. If you want to work with SourcinBox and buy inventory now, please sign up for free and contact us to enjoy 1-on-1 customer manager service. We will do our best to escort your business during the Chinese New Year.