In the eCommerce world, the Q1 is considered the most challenging period of the Year. Christmas is over and people have already spent a lot of money over the holidays, while in China suppliers are closing for the Spring festival, and it is impossible to buy new products.
So is the only solution closing? No, not at all. We are here to show you how, even in this situation, there is always a good strategy to boost your sales.
So continue to read our article to learn how the Chinese New Year affects online businesses and why you should organize in advance. How can you overcome Chinese New Year challenges and a couple of great selling strategies to apply to the Q1 to make awesome profits also in this period of the year.
The Chinese New Year Problem
What is the Spring Festival?
Chinese New Year or Spring Festival begins between the end of January and mid of February, depending on the year. Billions of people around the globe celebrate the beginning of the new year of the traditional Chinese calendar or Lunar Calendar, but no one as much as the people in China. The Official National Holiday there lasts Two Weeks!
Wait, what? That’s right, the whole country shuts down for a long party. Chinese New Year’s date changes every year, and while the official holiday lasts for about 2 weeks, it is customary for most businesses to take a few days before and after to round out the holiday period. This means that on average, your suppliers take at least two weeks off.
How the CNY affects Dropshipping
The bad news is that dropshipping businesses are definitely affected by this holiday. However, once you understand what slows you down, you’ll be in a better position to prepare. There are some main things you should be aware of.
Firstly, many suppliers will stop accepting orders in the weeks leading up to the holiday starting mid-January. Two weeks before the holiday products will start to run low and suppliers won’t be interested in replacing them before the Chinese New Year. In fact, they aim to close with their warehouses empty.
Secondly, the shortage of goods will also cause a rise in the price of the products because everybody wants to buy the last stock before the factories close.
Thirdly, many suppliers will be closed for the entire month which means that along with not fulfilling orders, they will be uncontactable as well. So you couldn’t ask them anything, no info on previous shippings, no quotations for new products, nothing.
Finally, it takes a week or two for things to get going again in the new year. Some suppliers may not return to full capacity until early March.
How Can You prepare your dropshipping business for CNY?
So in this situation how can you prepare your dropshipping business for the Chinese New Year? With just this little advance planning and creative thinking, you can have your dropshipping eCommerce store run smoothly throughout the Chinese New Year business shut down.
You have 2 main things to do, and these are, buy a small stockpile of your most popular items to keep delays to an absolute minimum and prepare your customer for a small shipping delay of about a week. (This is normally the time off that the forwarder companies take during the Chinese New Years).
Before Christmas is even over, from the beginning of December, you should start planning for the Q1. You need to decide which products to buy, order some stocks, and thanks to Yakkyofy, keep them in our warehouse in Shenzhen for free, ready to be shipped out when the factories will be closed.
But how to choose the products to buy? Which are the best ones for the Q1?
Continue to read to discover a couple of good planning strategies for the first quarter of the year.
Q1 Dropshipping Strategies: The New Year Resolution Strategies
At the end of every year, people start to think about what they have done and how to improve themselves in the next year. This is what is called a New Year Resolution. Well, we are going to use this habit to create a marketing strategy for your business.
If you search on google which are the biggest new year resolutions, you will see that they are always similar and normally connected to:
- Losing Weight
- Getting in Shape
- Having a healthier lifestyle and diet
Analyzing this trend, you can start to assume that people are going to invest money in products that can help them achieve these goals. Many say that after Christmas people are not going to spend money, this is actually not true. Statistics show that people are willing to spend a lot of money on their new year’s resolutions.
As described in the CBN article, seems that 56 percent of US people who make New Year’s resolutions spend money to stay on track – often hundreds or even thousands of dollars. 40% of them will spend between 100 and 500 dollars and 20% between 1000 and 3000 thousand dollars.
At this point, we know that people are going to spend money to lose weight and improve their health and this means that we have to buy stock in advance of this type of product and invest in this niche.
Q1 Dropshipping Strategies: The Valentine’s Day Strategy
Similar to the new year resolutions strategy is Valentine’s Day Strategy. We know in advance that the 14th of February will be Valentine’s Day and people will be going to spend money on gifts and other items related to this special day.
Normally the presents for this holiday are always traditional and similar each year.
- Rings
- Jewelry
- Stuffed Animals
- Homemade pastries ( people buy tools to bake them);
- Love charms;
So in this situation, you know what to buy in advance to boost your sales during Valentine’s day. So why don’t you prepare in advance?
But it doesn’t end here…
Try thinking about all the celebrations and holidays that occur in this period, and think about what you and your loved ones would purchase on these occasions.
Think about Carnival for instance, you would probably want a fancy wig or costume for that one party where you have to look your very best.
Don’t forget to consider also more regional holidays, such as St Patricks’ Day, which is a very important holiday in Ireland and the United States, with parades and celebrations.
The main colour of this day is green, so as long as your goodies are interesting, traditional or of the good shade of green, they will sell!
Go throw your calendar and the calendar of the countries to which you market your items, highlight the holidays in Q1 and think of the items that could work.
This type of work can help you prepare your eCommence, and often the product selection is fairly easy, as the likely best-sellers can be predicted by looking back at previous years.
Q1 Dropshipping Strategies: choose your products wisely
As we all already know, COVID-19 is part of our life right now and we need to deal with it.
While things have changed, and international commerce has somehow recoved, with worldwide retail eCommerce sales reaching $4.23 trillion in 2020, people have also developed new habits.
Travelling to different countries is not as widespread as it used to be, and as a consequence, there has been a significant reduction in international flights which led to an increase in the cost of shipments.
The new conditions have determined a more limited cargo space compared to the one that was available before. For this reason, airlines and forwarder companies are becoming day after day more severe in the check of volumetric packages.
In fact, the cost of a package is calculated on 2 factors: its weight and its volume. When an item is a small object the cost is calculated only on the weight, when the volume of a package exceeds certain measures it is also calculated on volume.
Previously, the companies were quite accommodating with volumetric packages when they slightly exceeded the standard, but today, following the new conditions determined by Covid, the controls have become much stricter.
To run a successful business, then you need to adapt to these new conditions and choose wisely the products you are going to sell. This means choosing products that are not really big in volume and not super heavy, to give you a parameter, try to sell only products under 1 KG and that can enter in a shoebox.
How Yakkyofy Can help you during Q1
So the key to having success during Q1 is advance planning:
- Choose the products that you are going to promote;
- Select products that are small in size and not really heavy;
- Order them in stock;
Now that you have your ideas in place, you need to think about logistics and how to organise your product purchases, contact several suppliers to get quotes, hope that they speak good English so that the orders are correct, organise warehouse rentals in China… or do you?
Luckily for you, you don’t if you choose Yakkyofy!
Yakkyofy is an all-in-one solution for sourcing over 12 million goods in China.
We work with thousands of suppliers on a regular basis and can offer you high-quality products at low B2B costs, including varieties that may not be accessible on Chinese marketplaces. Among our services are the following:
- Sourcement of High-quality products from some of China’s leading producers;
- Quality control of your goods when they arrive and before shipping;
- Product evaluation of your items directly of your in China with real-life product images;
- Negotiating with manufacturers to get the best B2B prices for you;
- Order Fulfillment Automation with several store platforms;
- Management of shipping logistics on your behalf;
- Access to a real-time Virtual Warehouse, accessible 24/7, to be always up to day with your inventory;
- Fast Shipping with Special Line in only 7-12 days;
- Customization of your products with your own logo;
- Private labelling of your product packaging;
With us, the only thing you will have to worry about is selling your products, we will deal with everything else.
What are you waiting for? Ask for a bulk quotation right away!
Don’t you know how to do that? Here a video tutorial for you:
