Chinese New Year and its impact on dropshipping
If you are dropshipping and you source from Aliexpress or AliBaba in China, it is important to know that the Chinese New Year may slow down the processing of your orders. Here’s how to take advantage of this opportunity for your business and ensure good delivery times.
What does Chinese New Year mean?
The Chinese New Year, also called Lunar New Year, is an important and sacred holiday for Asians in general and for the Chinese in particular. It should be noted that this festival is the most celebrated in Asia. The Chinese do not work during the period of the festival which extends over a week to 15 days. On this occasion, they chase away the evil spirits of the year that is ending. Then, they meet with their families around tasty meals. This way, they strengthen the bonds and create a good atmosphere. It is a moment of joy that makes you forget the stress generated by the daily work.
During this New Year’s Eve, many people travel for the sole purpose of reuniting with parents and family. This celebration takes place in the home of the elders of each family. It has a great impact and no one wants to be left out of the event. People are able to take planes to leave one continent for another. Thus, they take advantage of this great historical moment that allows to reunite the whole family. It is understandable that during this time, work is stopped. The activities are suspended.
It is a slow period for Asian countries. It should be noted that China has a highly developed logistics network which favors the acceleration of activities. But during this period, logistics is slowed down. Any activity is affected by this event. The impact is even more important when you do dropshipping. If you own an e-commerce platform, you will suffer the consequences. This will be felt in the calculations at the end of the month. This is to say that Alibaba’s vacations generate consequences.
When is the Chinese New Year?
For 2018, the dates for Chinese New Year are February 15 through February 21. In 2019, the Chinese New Year will start on February 4th. It is necessary to foresee this period if you have an e-commerce site in order not to find yourself with too long delivery times. Indeed, if your products are ordered directly in China, there will be few people working during this period. Thus, the delivery time will be longer because the processing of orders will be much longer.
Chinese New Year: Impact on dropshipping
Dropshipping is the activity that is most affected by the Chinese New Year. After having understood the principle of dropshipping, we can easily notice that the dropshipper plays the role of intermediary between the customer and the supplier. He connects these two parties through his e-commerce site. To do dropshipping, the dropshipper looks for a serious supplier who meets his conditions. It is therefore the articles of the latter that he exhibits in his dropshipping store.
Among the big serious suppliers, we find Alibaba or Aliexpress which are Chinese suppliers. Generally, dropshippers use these two big suppliers. In general, the products come from China. As Chinese, the suppliers take a vacation to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Thus, during this holiday period, the processing of orders launched by dropshippers experiences a slow pace. This state of affairs increases the delivery time, which leads to disappointments. To avoid this damage, as a dropshipper, you should plan for such a period.
This way, you will not end up with long delivery times. If you order products directly from China, your order will not be processed quickly because few people are at the post office during this period. The processing time will be longer and so will the delivery time.
How are AliExpress orders handled during the Chinese New Year?
The New Year period can be considered as a period of inactivity. This means that there is a break in the daily work, which results in losses. During these few days, orders cannot be filled. Moreover, in China, the post office is on vacation. The same applies to the production of factories. The latter is decreasing considerably. Everything is slowing down, including AliExpress, which is one of the major dropshipping and online trading sites.
This means that AliExpress is not immune to the decline in activity that is noticeable in the country despite its size. The quality of its logistics is not as good as it is during the rest of the year. The direct consequence is that delivery times are much longer. On the production side, there are more manufacturing defects. This is simply because the number of workers on the production lines drops considerably.
The Chinese New Year has an impact on several sectors of activity. To avoid these consequences on your online store, you must plan and anticipate this period. There is no point in trivializing the impact of Chinese New Year on your business. If you do, you risk losing a lot.
What strategy to adopt in e-commerce during the Chinese New Year?
There are different possibilities. You can take a vacation during this time and delegate your work. However, I know you are a hard worker and you want to succeed! That’s why here are some other possibilities that will help your business grow during this Chinese New Year.
Work on your SEO and improve your site
You’ll have a little more time on your hands if you’re cutting ads because you can’t get the same delivery times as before during this period if you source in China. Of course, if you are dropshipping with a supplier in Europe or in another country than China, you are not concerned.
During this period, you will be able to work on writing your emails, story telling, improving your website and especially working on your natural referencing. You can also imagine other strategies by looking for new products or suppliers. We tend to stay too focused on advertising and sales. However, it is by working on these details that you will be able to grow your business and maybe even find the key that will allow you to live easily from your dropshipping activity. Personally, I took advantage of this period to take some time off and be more creative with other niche ideas.
Stock up and attack the competition
During this period, you can very well cut ads to stop selling. If you have a good backend with abandoned cart follow-ups by email and a good natural referencing, it is likely that you will still have some orders. So you can build up your inventory before the beginning of the Chinese New Year. All you have to do is analyze your sales and predict which products you sell the most and how many items you need.
Another interesting strategy would be to come and investigate your competitors’ sites, look for the products they sell the most on their shopify and build up inventory to cut them off during this period. You could then provide their customers and target them while promising fast delivery because you have stocks at home of products that interest them.
The Chinese New Year is an opportunity to focus more on improving your website and sales tunnels or even to make more sales by building up your inventory and always meeting the demand. You’ll learn a lot more in my awesome dropshipping training!
