The title pretty much says it all, but I’ll write a few words just in case this isn’t clear. I’ll start with a story to demonstrate that I’m just now learning this lesson.
For about a month now, I’ve been expecting to receive the advance copies of our Treasure Chest on October 8. Leading up to that date, there was no indication from our manufacturer (Panda) that the date wouldn’t be met. It wasn’t a firm deadline, but I had told backers to expect a project update with photos on that date.
Meanwhile, in late September I submitted the shipping information for early copies of Viticulture to be sent from 4px (a fulfillment center in Hong Kong) to backers in Asia and a few other areas. The orders were successfully processed, no problem. [UPDATE: 4px did not package the games correctly, so I no longer use or recommend them.]
However, as of October 8, not only had I not received the advanced Treasure Chests, but according to the tracking numbers for Viticulture, the fulfillment center hadn’t sent any of the packages. The two were seemingly unrelated, as they’re handled by different companies…but then I realized what was happening.
China and Hong Kong were on holiday.
You see, I live in the US. We have exactly 10 national holidays, and they’re spread out throughout the year. Also, many US businesses still operate on national holidays.
Compare that to China, which has up to 52 different holidays. They’re not all national holidays, and it’s tough to tell from that list when industry actually shuts down, but I know from experience that it’s a significant number of them.
How does this affect Kickstarter creators who manufacture in China? For most of the year, it doesn’t impact us at all. But if you have a deadline or are planning a production schedule, you need to account for those dates, particularly early February and early October.
In the end, the advanced copies of the Treasure Chest were rescheduled for arrival this Friday, and the copies of Viticulture started moving again on Monday. No long-term damage was incurred. But I thought I’d share this cautionary tale with you so you can avoid the same foibles I ran into.
11 Comments on “Kickstarter Lesson #124: If You Manufacture in China, Account for Chinese Holidays”
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Hey there, again, Jamey!
It has been awhile since I had last commented on your blog—several months ago.
Since, my partner and I have been knee deep in planning/preparing to launch our Kickstarter campaign—a labor of love that we have been working on designing/developing since the idea was conceived almost a year ago to this date—last December (2020). We are looking at a Target Launch Date planned for/in May, next year (2022).
For readers of your blog, I’d say, if there’s one thing I’ve learned (so far) in/throughout this whole process, is that planning is literally everything. Never underestimate the value/importance of it. But, the “plan” also has to be realistic and adaptable and take into account any potential changes/shifts in “reality”, as you know it at the time.
One way to do that is to build in *plenty* of buffer time.
I would say to build in plenty of buffer time for almost everything. If someone tells you something will take 10 x days to do/complete, plan for 15 x days, or even better, 20 x days.
…Your/this blog post hits home because, while we haven’t encountered any issues as of yet (thank goodness; fingers crossed), the upcoming Chinese New Year festival was actually mentioned, to us, by our manufacturer, in an email we had received, in early November (to be aware of, and, because of timing right now, to do our best to move quickly as feasible/make smart decisions before we hit it).
To share, THIS is a cut/paste from an email we had received recently from our manufacturer, expressing/conveying this sense of urgency:
“…The Chinese New Year festival is arriving, on 31 Jan 2022. Holidays will start from Mid Jan to Mid Feb. So if our project meets this period, it will take more time….”
We appreciate that our manufacturer communicated that to us…and, early in November, at that; one would hope other manufacturers would do the same, however, unfortunately, that may not always necessarily be the case and others may not be as fortunate—potentially blindsiding them, if they aren’t at least aware of the possibility.
…So far, we’ve been moving quickly and deliberately; with a 5-10 x day shipping/delivery estimate, shipping by air/USPS, we ‘should’ be receiving a small (2nd) batch of our product prototypes soon/any day now (IOT evaluate the product/molding before running a larger batch of (400) x samples…and then, later, our 1st mass production run).
…another thing for your readers to be aware of/account for in their planning—at least our manufacturer had communicated this to us, as well—is that, especially at this time of year, their engineer was/is extremely busy. Email correspondence has been really good with them, but when a manufacturer has, say, only one engineer staffed (who is likely very busy, juggling multiple tasks/projects/etc), your project might not necessarily be a priority (at the time), and it may take (some) time for the engineer to get to it.
We planned very deliberately, methodically, and meticulously; doesn’t mean that something won’t come up, but I/we also do feel very confident that we have built a very adaptable plan that ‘should’ withstand any potential road bumps/delays etc.
….I know the great Mike Tyson’s oft quoted statement “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth/face”….however, whether preparing for war/OR a Kickstarter campaign, I’d rather go into it with at least some plan, rather than no plan at all.
(I have my personal thoughts on Tyson’s quote above…I do think it’s often quoted as justification for NOT having built/put a plan in place AT ALL or downplaying the value/importance of it; that, in my opinion, would be extremely unwise…)
Let’s just say, we’ve deliberately backwards planned, not just from our TLD, but from when we are saying/expecting that all our rewards will actually have been received by all our backers, not just in the US, but also worldwide. As of right now, we are planning to ship both to the US AND to the EU/foreign/worldwide countries—we are still working through/researching things, in that regard.
A lot to learn/figure out here, for sure.
Thanks again for your post!
I know I wrote a lot there, Jamey, but I/we’ve learned so much through the process of really going from idea conception to, now, pushing into manufacturing and building up/planning and preparing for the eventual launch of our Kickstarter campaign, next year.
Our product isn’t a board/tabletop game, however, I do believe that some of our experiences/lessons learned are relevant/applicable to anyone looking to launch a Kickstarter.
Looking back several months ago—in the JAN and FEB timeframe—I really had to do/take a super honest assessment and inventory of my own skills/abilities / strengths and weaknesses. All I had was an idea; while I do have some logistics experience that I’m finding to be useful now, in the early stages of this process, I had zero skill/experience in product design/development. I’m not a product designer or engineer.
While there are a plethora of cases of people learning—being self-taught and trained—for myself, it made sense to do a lot of research and hire someone to do the legwork required for completion of those stages/aspects of this project. After much research, way back in February this year, I ultimately decided to go ahead and hire/engage a small UK-based product design/development consulting firm—going through several stages of design/development—gradually nudging my idea along to making it a reality, and take it to market.
…Speaking to my/our planning timeline, it wasn’t too long after engaging them that we had received a comprehensive timeline of their expected turn around for completion of each, various “stage” in their process. Granted, there is/was a cost associated with this, of course. For those with an idea—even just a sketch on a napkin—IF research indicates that you have a fairly unique/innovative idea, however simple it may be—and, IF you have the funds/financing/capital available—I would highly recommend doing this.
Each respective stage had expected deliverables that we would receive at the conclusion of each stage.
When it came to manufacturing, this consultancy firm was immensely valuable in that they took the lead with reaching out to their established network of manufacturing partners. They basically provided us with a single page spreadsheet, filled with all quotes they had sourced from (8) x different manufacturers in China. As for timeline, with a Kickstarter Target Launch Date in May 2022, this was something we had deliberately started working—albeit with/through that consultancy firm—as early as August 2021 (and, it was on our radar as early as pretty much the month-February 2021-I had hired/engaged that firm).
Planning definitely shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Let me tell you, the quotes we had received were literally all over the place, in terms of cost related to both laying on/establishing the plastic injection molding to the actual mass production run, which we haven’t actually done yet (quoted to us, per our request, in increasing increments of 52,000 units/pieces—we picked that specific number because of the specific nature of our product).
For laying on the plastic injection molding/tooling only, the quotes ranged from around $2,500 to almost $13,000. This is a fairly significant difference between/among quotes, in my opinion. For a “lesson learned”, whether they do it themselves, or through a 3rd party consultancy firm, I would highly recommend, to your readers, to get multiple quotes—as many as possible. Had we only sourced 1 or 2 quotes, and had they been on the higher side, we may have been stuck paying an insanely high cost, much higher than we ended up paying with the manufacturer we ultimately selected/decided to go with. From this experience, I would say people should aim for maybe at least 8-10 x different quotes.
Granted, there are a few other considerations we found with manufacturing (ie life of the mold, how many “shots”, I believe it was called, that the mold can take before having to be replaced…thus, incurring a new tooling/molding cost).
Thanks for sharing this part of your publishing journey! I completely agree about the importance of planning (and having plenty of buffer time).
Can I make a suggestion that this be moved *far* up the chronological list into the planning phase? This definitely just bit my campaign & was made even worse by the Wuhan Coronavirus extending Chinese New Year. My products I was supposed to have in my hand today won’t even *start* production for another week.
I never saw this post until now, as I’m reading the post-Kickstarter posts a week from my campaign end. Accounting for holidays needs to take during the planning phase, not after the project :(
Definitely! I’ll do that.
This should be a useful tool.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_holidays_in_China
Jamey, great post. And I’ll second the advice.
We made the mistake of making a very minor Pre-Press update just before this holiday, not realizing it was coming. Had we known, we would have authorized the Pre-Production copies instead (to have them in transit during the holiday), and updated the simple art fix afterward (which I wouldn’t need to have seen to trust). This could have saved us 3 weeks to a month, but as a result, the opposite has happened.
The pre-press fix took longer than expected, went into the holiday, had to wait till after the holiday to finish, THEN the PPCs got started. As of now, I’m yet to receive confirmation that they’re even being printed, let alone shipped. It was utterly terrible timing, and has pushed our ship date back a very critical month. ie: 2015 instead of 2014!
Will it all work out? Oh yes. Just not the way *I* planned. But lesson learned!
John: Thanks for sharing your story here. It’s surprising how those little timing tweaks can make a big difference!
Great article, an embedded graphic and table would be a great tool.
You’re not the only creator to run into this. I’ve received updates on at least two projects since the beginning of the month that were along the lines of, “we’ve been trying to get a quote, but it turns out China is on holiday.”
As an aside: I find it troublesome the number of creators that are only just getting quotes after the campaign has closed. I’m not even talking about the ones who’ve had materials improvements because of unanticipated success – I seem to have run into a streak of backing projects where it doesn’t sound like they even have a manufacturer lined up yet, and that’s not made clear until it’s too late for me to say, “hm… you don’t sound prepared enough to receive my money…”
Adrienne: I see what you’re saying about getting quotes for the first time after Kickstarter. I’m all about creators doing everything up front and being transparent about it. But as a backer, I do feel some responsibility to check the project page (particularly the Risks and Challenges section) to see if a creator has all of their ducks in a row before backing the project so I’m not subject to unpleasant surprises like that.