Every January, buying desks in Hong Kong debate how many extra weeks to add “for CNY.” The safer-looking answer — add the same buffer to every vendor — is often the most expensive.
Seasonal capacity readiness work starts from prior-year slip, not from folklore. Pull receipts that crossed the factory holiday window and compare them with the same vendors in a quiet quarter.
Patterns we see repeatedly
- Fabric and trim mills with strong pre-holiday discipline may still look late if inland trucking after berth is counted against them.
- Hardware and moulding suppliers sometimes stretch genuinely because tooling crews rotate off.
- Some “capacity confirmation” emails recycle last year’s wording without matching last year’s performance.
A narrower response
Raise order timing or buffers only on vendors whose historical stretch is real under your definitions. Keep reliable names on their normal calendar. That is vendor lead-time reporting used as a planning tool, not as decoration for a peak-season slide.