Posts Tagged ‘Peak Season Preparation’
Manufacturing in China: 10 Tips to Peak Season Preparation (Part 3)
Even the most fruitful production and distribution chains can sometimes find themselves running out of capacity due to a shortage of trucks or freight, let alone when they are dealing with the large demand during peak shipping seasons.
Online stores and brick-and-mortar brands must keep up with the demand of orders coming in, and make sure that each package is delivered smoothly. During this surge, you must make a detailed strategy for your distribution.
To help to make it through without too many hiccups, in the last part of the peak season preparation, we will provide more tips about logistics to help you navigate the tough season. Let’s dive in.
Click here for the previous parts of the peak season preparation tips:
7. Review Packaging
As eCommerce made it possible for anyone to buy anything with a quick click, shopping experiences are becoming more important than ever before. It often involves getting all kinds of items in the same store and items will be delivered to a customer’s house with a beautiful package safe and sound.
When it comes to packaging, everyone loves getting a beautiful package waiting at their doorsteps. This sense of excitement is one of the best parts of the customer experience. To avoid any potential damage, it is important for your packaging not to be damaged in any way. For example, if you are shipping something fragile then it must be packed and shipped inside an enclosed six-sided box to prevent exposure during transit.
Also, you need to take your package design into account. Now, young generations tend to share their worthy unboxing moments on their social platforms such as Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok, which has a dramatic effect on potential buyers who research reviews prior to making a purchase. In fact, product unboxing videos have become an integral part of the online buying experience. Admittedly, the product packaging gives the first impression to a new customer. We all know that people don’t always buy something because it’s cheap – they buy it because they feel connected with the brand.
In addition, try to make your package easy to open. No one wants to tear the package with a long-awaited item in heavy plastic that’s almost impossible to open. If people have the frustration of opening a package, they probably won’t turn to shop again.
8. Manage Shipping
You make sure to do everything right before the peak season arrives. You approve the manufacturing process, follow up on inspections and review website design and product copywriting time after time; all in an effort to leave your customers satisfied. Now – you are just one step away from shipping out this merchandise.
However, during the festive period, the demand for freight capacity is at a high during peak season. Global supply chain efficiencies can get disrupted as all the online direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are struggling to deliver their products on time as late deliveries can negatively impact the customer’s perception of the brand, leading to lost sales in the future.
Therefore, one way to manage your shipping properly is by collaborating with multiple logistics companies to increase visibility and take advantage of all available shipping capacity will increase profitability and ensure prompt delivery of your products.
Besides, you need to think outside the box. For example, airfreight can be effective by providing rapid service, while LCL (“Less-than-Container-Load”) shipments can be your alternative that is cheaper and just a bit slower. The point is that now is the perfect time to explore more shipping options so that you can get your package delivered faster without feeling like you need to break the bank while doing so.
9. Secure Sufficient Capital
Regardless of your company’s size or industry sector, working capital is an important metric to achieve success during the holiday season. This is because you may need more funds readily available to increase inventory, hire some part-time staff, set up holiday displays, and invest in advertising.
Consider whether you have the positive working capital needed to ensure that your business operations are running smoothly. Because there will likely be a spike in extra expense during the peak season. For instance, an increase in shipping rates for couriers coming from the production facility to your warehouse and then being sent to customers’ doorsteps. Make sure you take this into account when calculating how much you will pay for deliveries with your distributors.
Human capital is an important aspect of planning for peak season. With new rules and regulations surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have had to reduce the number of staff present on the shop floor to comply with new physical distancing rules. However, as peak season approaches, your warehouse needs to find a way to increase productivity while keeping your workers safe. This can mean adding more shifts on weekends or evenings to increase capacity.
Keep in mind to recruit and train enough staff to handle logistics and other work. If you don’t do this, then orders might not get fulfilled on time or customers will be left waiting. Also, try to have a standard process that everyone on your team can follow correctly. Make sure that all packages will be verified, all staff that receives stock does it the same way, and that all boxes are verified, received, and unpacked together, accurately counted, and checked for accuracy.
10. Stay Organized
A great way to excel in the peak season is to be well-prepared for anything from manufacturing to distribution to shipping. The more prepared you are for the upcoming peak season beforehand, the better you can stay efficient and proactive and avoid any issues that may arise.
Shield Works Precision Manufacturing is a company that has experience and knowledge in navigating the struggles of the peak shipping season. We provide visibility into your supply chain and will help you through the process without risks. We can help you during the craziness that comes with busy production and shipping! Contact us today if you want to know how our one-stop-shop solution is for success even during the most challenging peak season.
Manufacturing in China: 10 Tips to Peak Season Preparation (Part 2)
With the COVID-19 pandemic still affecting internationally in both production supply, business model, and customer shopping experience, there is no denying that holiday shopping seasons will be vastly different than what they once were.
Don’t be overwhelming. Luckily, we’ve got you back. Welcome to Part 2/3 of the “Manufacturing in China 10 Tips to Peak Season Preparation” series where we list the most important and useful tricks in production plans when it comes to peak seasons. If you want to review some of the previous tips, click here to see what they covered.
Today, we will show you more tips. Let’s dive into part two.
Click here for the previous parts of the peak season preparation tips:
4. Prepare for Warehouse Strategy
You may be aware that your warehouse will experience an influx of work thanks to the increased demand for your products during the upcoming peak holiday seasons. However, what you may overlook is that your warehouse will remain busy even afterward because it needs to deal with return volumes after promotions end.
In this case, you need to have a detailed warehousing strategy to operate your warehouse more efficiently during the peak season, including using a better system to keep track of each item and having more warehouse space and extra staff to handle the sales and returns. This is because poor strategies focus on maintaining the status quo and relying on outdated and simple inventory systems that may negatively affect your sales performance if they cannot share data between other supply chain platforms.
When it comes to predicting how much warehouse space you need for all your products throughout the peak season, be sure to account for more than just enough room by calculating inventory based on the previous number of orders or other relevant data.
Don’t risk leaving too little warehouse space for your inventory because it will be difficult to rent another warehouse during peak season – either the location is too distant or the lease prices are not affordable, and most importantly, you don’t have time to deal with it. But it’s also important not to overstock and be left with unsold inventory once the season is over, which can hurt your cash flow.
It’s not only essential to know your product units so that you can prepare internally for where they lie ahead, but you also need to keep your manufacturing partner in the loop so that they can allocate those same resources effectively. If you don’t, the resources might get promised to your competitor.
5. Diversify Production
In the past, many foreign buyers used to have a sense of building a strong, solid relationship with one manufacturer when outsourcing production to China. But this way of thinking has been thrown out in recent years.
From the threat of a global shutdown due to the pandemic to the Suez Canal blockage putting the transfer of goods at a standstill, it’s never been more important than ever before to make sure that your business is prepared for all potential eventualities.
To avoid supply chain disruption, it seems that more buyers are opting for diversifying production to lower the risk of delays and raise profit margins. In other words, rather than relying on only one supplier in manufacturing, they are securing deals with a few different factories or service suppliers. Not only can this option avoid single points of failure, but also creates a much more reliable and predictable supply chain, which is of paramount importance for your peak season preparation.
You can keep production costs lower through higher quantities when working with a single supplier in China, but when choosing multiple production partners, you can seize the opportunity for cost reductions through continued negotiation and reordering. Additionally, during peak seasons it is useful to work with different producers for an unlimited supply of goods when you have multiple SKUs.
6. Understand Lead Time
When it comes to production, you need to understand the lead time of your production project when you make an order before the peak season.
Typically, lead time is the amount of time between an order starting and finishing. To put it simply in your manufacturing situation, lead time is when you can measure the period from signing a production contract with your supplier up until the completion of production and its readiness to ship out.
Once you understand what the lead time means, take time to review potential problems which can affect your desired amount of lead time – for example, any foreseeable issues regarding raw materials being unavailable or too expensive. Discuss these with your supplier and see if they can do anything about it before finalizing a purchase order.
Of course, sometimes delays and disruptions can’t always be avoided. To prevent any potential issues, you need to act quickly and communicate effectively with your suppliers.
Keep in mind that the holiday season will be so busy that many manufacturing service providers may stop taking new orders a few weeks before. Thus, it’s crucial to make an order ahead of time with an accurate order volume to avoid getting behind on orders. Don’t forget to confirm what the exact time frame is from when an order is placed until when it’s shipped and arrives at your warehouse.
Also, stay up to date with your manufacturing partner to ensure that the production of your project will remain at its usual high standard within the time frame given. It will be a good idea for you to leave enough time not only just for production but also for the final inspection to ensure your product quality.
Key Takeaways
To be successful during the peak season, there are several things you need to think about beforehand and one of the most important parts is choosing a reliable and professional manufacturing partner to get your products made in high quality.
This is because working with a knowledgeable expert can help you handle the whole production without risks and avoid many potential problems, so you can focus on making a business strategy.
At Shield Works Precision Manufacturing, we provide a wide range of custom manufacturing solutions to suit any type of business – large or small. From prototyping through production and assembly, we’re able to take care of everything. Click here to discuss your project with our experts to achieve peak season success.