Chinese New Year card orders: plan the supplier milestones

A public holiday date is not a production schedule. Chinese New Year falls on 6 February 2027, and that one date says almost nothing about when a card order can still be accepted, approved, manufactured and shipped.

Seasonal planning fails when a buyer works from the calendar instead of from the supplier. Two factories in the same industrial district stop on different days, restart with different headcounts and sit behind different carrier schedules. The holiday is fixed. Everything a buyer actually needs is specific to the supplier, to the construction ordered and to the route the cartons take.

The Kaway seasonal milestone plan is five confirmed dates, agreed in writing before the purchase order, covering order acceptance, component availability, proof approval, production and dispatch, with the carrier confirmed separately. The sections below set out each milestone, what it means and what happens when it is assumed rather than confirmed.

01. The holiday date and the factory calendar are different things

The published holiday and the operating calendar of a plant are two separate pieces of information, and only the second one governs an order. In mainland China the official public holiday period is announced by the State Council, usually a few months ahead, and it is shorter than the period most factories are actually at reduced capacity.

Around that announcement sit several supplier-specific realities. Production lines wind down before the official start because migrant staff travel home early. Raw material suppliers and subcontractors close on their own dates, which are rarely the same as the card plant's. After the restart, a line runs at partial output for a period that depends on how many people come back and how quickly.

None of this is knowable from a calendar. It is knowable from the supplier, which is why the first action in a seasonal plan is a request rather than a calculation.

02. Five dates to get confirmed in writing

Ask the supplier to confirm five milestones for the relevant period, and treat anything that comes back without a date as unconfirmed. A verbal "the plant closes around mid February" is not a milestone.

Order acceptance

The last date on which a new purchase order will be entered against the pre-holiday production window. An order accepted after it is an order queued for the restart.

Component availability

The date the supplier's own inputs stop. Chips, inlays, overlay film and specialist substrates come from separate vendors with separate closures, and a card plant that is open cannot build a card whose inlay supplier shut a week earlier.

Proof approval

The date by which the buyer has to return an approved proof. This is the only milestone on the list the buyer controls, and it is the one that slips.

Production

The window in which the run is actually made. Ask explicitly what day the quoted production days start counting from, because suppliers differ and the answer moves the whole plan.

Dispatch

The date cartons leave the plant. Dispatch is not delivery, and the gap between them is set by the route, not by the factory.

03. Plan backwards from the date stock has to be usable

The anchor of a seasonal plan is the date usable stock has to be in the buyer's hands, not the date the order is placed. Usable means received, inspected and released, which sits later than delivered.

Two decisions follow from the backward plan. The first is whether a staged delivery is better than one shipment, so that a first tranche covers the opening weeks while the balance travels later. The second is whether to bring normal replenishment forward, which is usually cheaper than paying for speed in January.

Neither decision needs a holiday to justify it. Both become obvious once the anchor date is written down and the lanes are drawn behind it.

04. Proof approval is the milestone that slips

The approval step is inside the buyer's organisation, which is exactly why it is the one that breaks a seasonal plan. A purchase order is signed by one person in an afternoon. A proof has to go to a brand owner, a client or a compliance reviewer, and it comes back with a change.

Three things shorten that cycle. Freeze the specification before the proof is requested, so the round trip is a check rather than a design review. Name one approver and one deputy, with authority to sign during the holiday season. Agree in advance what counts as a minor change that the plant can absorb and what counts as a new proof, because that distinction decides whether the slot survives.

Specification work done early is also work that is reusable. Writing the specification so it reads the same way to every factory removes most of the back and forth that a seasonal deadline cannot absorb.

05. Components stop before the line does

A card is an assembly, and the assembly is only as available as its least available part. The chip, the inlay, the overlay, the core material and any special finish each come from a vendor with its own closure.

This is where construction choices change a date. A plain PVC card with a widely stocked chip has a different component profile from a wooden card, a recycled core or an unusual chip in a small quantity. What is genuinely custom in a card is the part that has to be sourced rather than pulled from stock, and that is the part a holiday exposes.

Ask the supplier which components for this exact construction are already held and which have to be purchased. A yes to the question "can you make this before the holiday" means very little if the inlay has not been ordered.

06. Freight restarts on its own schedule

Dispatch and delivery are set by different parties, and the carrier does not restart because the factory did. Sailing schedules thin out around the holiday, bookings are made well ahead, and the first vessels after the restart carry a backlog built up over several weeks.

The delivery term decides who is exposed to that. Under the ICC Incoterms rules, the three-letter term in the order says where risk and cost pass from seller to buyer, which is also where responsibility for a missed sailing sits. A buyer planning a seasonal order should know the term before the plan is drawn, not after a delay. How lead time and freight combine into a delivered date covers the mechanics in detail.

07. Write the plan down so the next season starts from evidence

A seasonal plan used once is a rescue. A seasonal plan recorded becomes the baseline for the following year, and the second year is where the saving is.

Record the five confirmed milestones with the dates given, the construction they applied to, the date the proof actually came back, and the date stock was genuinely usable. Hold it with the supplier record rather than in an inbox. The qualification record that names the approved entity and construction is the natural place for it, because the milestones are supplier-specific and so is that document.

Where the order is a repeat, consistency matters as much as timing. Keeping a second order identical to the first depends on the same parameters being written down, and a rushed seasonal reorder is the classic moment for them to be lost.

08. Worked example

Illustrative scenario, not a Kaway case study. A distributor needs 20,000 hotel key cards usable in the first week of March. The purchase order is signed in good time, comfortably before the supplier's stated order acceptance date, and the buyer treats the order as secured.

Artwork is returned eleven days after the cutoff, following a change requested by the end client. The plant is willing and the components are there, but the pre-holiday window has closed and the run joins the restart queue. The cards arrive in the third week of March.

Nothing in that sequence was a supplier failure. Order entry alone did not reserve a completed production slot, and the only milestone that moved was the one inside the buyer's own organisation.

09. Technical references

• The ICC Incoterms rules define the three-letter delivery terms that decide where risk and cost pass between seller and buyer, which is what determines who carries a missed sailing in a seasonal plan: iccwbo.org/business-solutions/incoterms-rules/.

10. Where Kaway fits

Kaway Group Limited was incorporated in Hong Kong in 2015, and the team has been making cards for more than 15 years. Kaway manufactures in-house in Dongguan, China, which means the order acceptance, component and production milestones come from the party that controls them rather than from an intermediary.

Minimum order is 500 units. Standard production is 12 calendar days for PVC and wooden cards, and a buyer planning a seasonal order should confirm with Kaway what day those calendar days start counting from for the specific job. Quote requests are answered the same working day, which matters most in the weeks when a day of silence costs a slot. Send the specification and the date stock has to be usable to have the milestones set against a real calendar. Distributors planning seasonal replenishment across several clients can send the plan for every client in one request.

11. Frequently asked questions

When does Chinese New Year fall in 2027?

On 6 February 2027. The official public holiday period in mainland China is announced separately by the State Council, and a given factory's actual stop and restart dates are different again, which is why the plan is built from supplier-confirmed milestones rather than from the holiday date.

How far ahead should a seasonal card order be placed?

Far enough ahead that proof approval still lands before the supplier's order acceptance cutoff, which is a different question from how long production takes. Work backwards from the date stock has to be usable, add receiving inspection, add transit, add the production window, and only then look at the calendar.

Does placing the purchase order early guarantee the delivery date?

No. A production slot is reserved by an approved proof, not by an entered order number. An order placed early and approved late behaves exactly like an order placed late.

Can a supplier give its closure dates months in advance?

Often only provisionally, because the official holiday period is announced by the authorities and the plant's own dates depend on staffing. Treat early dates as provisional, ask for them in writing anyway, and revisit them while the order is still being approved.

Is it better to split a seasonal order into two deliveries?

It depends on what the stock is for. A staged delivery protects the opening weeks and reduces the damage of a single delayed shipment, at the cost of a second freight movement. For a repeat line with steady consumption, bringing normal replenishment forward is usually simpler and cheaper than splitting.

What should be recorded after the season is over?

The five milestones as confirmed, the construction they applied to, the date the proof actually came back and the date stock was genuinely usable. Those four facts turn next year's plan from a guess into an adjustment.