To find your order date for a festival, count back from the day stock must be on sale: subtract your own receiving and listing time, shipping and clearance, inspection, production and, for new designs, sampling, then add a buffer. For new designs shipped by sea, the total is often four to six months; for repeats shipped by air it can be six to ten weeks.
The festival date itself changes every year for Diwali and Eid, so check the date for the year you are planning, not last year's.
The building blocks
- Sampling for a new design: typically a few weeks from brief to approved sample, longer with revisions.
- Production: ready stock one to two weeks; a repeat of a running design typically three to five weeks; a new design six to ten weeks from brief to shipment.
- Inspection and packing: a few days.
- Shipping: air freight is a matter of days; sea freight several weeks, including port time.
- Customs clearance and delivery to your warehouse: a few days to a week or more.
- Your own receiving, photography and listing: often one to three weeks.
- Buffer: two to four weeks, more in India's festival season.
Festival by festival
Diwali falls in October or November, following the Hindu lunar calendar. Diaspora shoppers buy in the weeks before it, and Rajkot workshops are at their busiest in the same period with domestic orders. Orders for Diwali sales should be placed early in the year and shipped by late summer.
Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha follow the Islamic lunar calendar, so both move about 11 days earlier each year. A plan copied from last year will be roughly two weeks late. Gulf and African buyers should recalculate from the current year's expected dates.
Christmas is fixed, but Western retailers want stock in store from early November or earlier, and online sellers need it in their fulfilment centres before the peak cut-off dates. Treat the start of November as the real deadline.
A worked example
Suppose you want new designs on sale on 1 November and plan to ship by sea. Allow two weeks for listing, about six weeks for sea freight and clearance, one week for inspection and packing, eight weeks for production of new designs, four weeks for sampling and three weeks of buffer. That is 24 weeks, so the brief must reach the maker in mid-May. The figures are an illustration; use your own route and maker's times.
What this means for a buyer
Do the count-back for each festival and put the order dates in your calendar; see a year-round ordering calendar. Creston & Co works for buyers only, for a fixed fee agreed in writing. We agree dates with Rajkot makers, track production weekly and tell you early if a date is at risk. Start with a free sourcing review.