Lunar New Year Supply Continuity Play
Factory shutdowns during Lunar New Year create predictable supply chain disruptions that catch unprepared businesses off guard every year. This article draws on insights from procurement and logistics experts to outline four practical strategies for maintaining product availability during the holiday period. These approaches range from adjusting order timing and inventory levels to establishing alternative supplier relationships that can bridge the seasonal gap.
Pull Ahead, Stock Extra, Split Supply
Pre-LNY Hedging is an effective strategy that I use to prevent running out of stock during the Lunar New Year (LNY). That happens when factories in Asia shut down for about a month. For 2026, this meant preparing before the February 15th closures.
Here is the strategy:
We moved orders up to December. For that, we used air freight for 25% of the volume, even though it cost 15% more to ensure timely arrival. We built a buffer by storing 8 weeks of extra inventory in local warehouses to cover the "blackout" period. We shifted 15% of production to a new partner in India to reduce our 100% dependence on China during the holiday period. We held daily updates with suppliers to ensure deadlines were met.
As a result, the trade-off was:
We spent $45,000 extra on storage and shipping fees. That let us manage zero out-of-stock items, and revenue growth by 16%.
Front Load Q1, Accept Liquidity Hit, Ensure Care
At D. Watson, a huge portion of our medical equipment (like BP monitors, glucometers, and nebulizers) and optical supplies relies on manufacturing out of China. When the factories shut down for the Lunar New Year, the disruption doesn't just last for the holiday week it creates a backlog that affects shipments well into March.
To hedge against this, we executed a heavy "Q1 Front-Load." Instead of our usual monthly rolling orders, we aggregated our forecasted demand for January, February, and March and pulled that entire order volume into late December. We essentially turned our Just-In-Time (JIT) model into a "Just-In-Case" model for that specific quarter.
Coordinating this meant having tough conversations with our procurement team in November to lock in production slots before the "pre-holiday rush" hit the Chinese factories.
The trade-off was cash flow pressure. By bringing three months of stock in at once, we tied up a significant amount of operating capital that could have been used for expansion or marketing elsewhere. We also stressed our warehousing capacity to its limit.
However, in the healthcare business, "out of stock" isn't just a missed sale it's a violation of trust. If a customer walks into D. Watson needing a nebulizer for a sick child, I cannot tell them to come back when the factories re-open. We accepted the hit to our liquidity to ensure our shelf reliability remained 100%.
Choose Backup Vendor, Pay More, Delight Collectors
We didn't want to sell out during Lunar New Year, so we found a backup supplier for our most popular replicas. We worked with both to ship everything early, which meant each item cost a bit more. Honestly, making less on each sale was a fair trade. It was better than disappointing our collectors or making someone miss their cosplay deadline.
Diversify Makers, Buy Early, Track Spec Differences
For Lunar New Year, we look at our sales numbers and get suppliers to ship everything early. One year we tried buying our bamboo cutting boards from a few different places. It worked, we didn't run out, but keeping track of the different specs was a hassle. We paid a bit more for that reliability. So figure out if having more suppliers is worth the inventory cost. And just keep talking to your partners. Constantly.
