Chinese New Year is on the 19th of Feb and we are about to enter the Year of the Sheep. Chinese New Year is no longer tiny blimp on the Western calendar and not limited to China. Vietnam, Singapore, North Korea and South Korea all take part in the celebrations. Business across the world will be put on hold while workers will spend time with their families and seeing in the new year.
To ensure that Chinese New Year does not have a negative impact on your business it’s well worth doing some research into what to expect and how to place for the future. Luckily for you, we have done the hard bit for you…
Firstly, you should be aware that suppliers in China will stop taking orders a few weeks in advance, some even stop as early as December. If you want to plan ahead for your business in 2016 make sure you are ordering your stock outside of these weeks or months. Even trying to grab hold of someone to talk about your order might be a stretch as you will not be the only business wanting to get their order pushed through before the festivities.
Chinese New Year is an auspicious period, so consumers will be buying good luck charms for the home or items with rams or goats motifs to celebrate. At the same time it is considered bad luck to go in to the new year with debt or a cluttered home, so it shouldn’t be surprising to think that many businesses in China may follow the same rules. Chinese business owners may use this to use this time to get their finances in order; ‘Start as you mean to go on’.
Much like Christmas in the UK, everything will shut down over this period or at least will have very limited opening hours. Production may also take a while to warm up or get back into the swing of things after the new year, so don’t go chasing suppliers on their first day back in the office. We can promise that Chinese businesses are extremely efficient so they will prioritise work that was not fulfilled before the New Year, so any new work that comes in will have to sit by the wayside until the back-log can be dealt with. Just be patient and polite as you would for any business during an important time in the calendar.
KSF Global are experts at working in China because that is where we started! If you need help sourcing or operating in China, contact our team to arrange a meeting info.eu@ksf-global.com or08450 944 699