Chinese New Year is coming: how much stock to order before the shutdown, and how to fund it

If you make your product in China, the order that matters most this season isn’t the Black Friday order. It’s the one you place before Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year 2027 falls on Saturday 6 February. Factories don’t just close for the day. Many slow down in the weeks before as workers travel home, shut for a stretch over the holiday, then take weeks to get back to full staffing. For an Australian brand selling online, that means one order has to carry you through a much longer gap than usual. It’s often double your normal buy, and it lands right when the cash from Christmas is already spoken for.

This guide covers how big that order should be, what it really costs in cash, and how to fund it without starving everything else.

Why does the shutdown need a bigger order, not just an earlier one?

Because the gap between shipments gets longer, and every week of that gap needs stock on the shelf.

Normally you reorder on a rhythm. Production takes a few weeks, the ship takes a few weeks, and a new carton lands before the last one runs out. Chinese New Year breaks the rhythm. The last production slot before the holiday fills early. After the restart, factories work through a backlog, often with fewer staff. Your first post-holiday shipment can land weeks later than a normal reorder would.

So the question isn’t “when do I order?” It’s “how many weeks of sales does this one order need to cover?”

Exact dates vary by factory and region, and no general guide can tell you yours. Before you do any maths, ask each supplier three things in writing:

1. What’s your last production slot and last ship date before the holiday?
2. When do you reopen, and when will you be back to normal output?
3. If I order now, what’s the realistic ex-factory date for my first order after the restart?

Then ask your freight forwarder for current transit and booking times to your port. Use their numbers, not someone else’s averages.

How do you work out the weeks of cover?

The formula is short:

Units to order = weekly unit sales × weeks of cover + safety stock − stock you’ll still hold when it lands

Weeks of cover is the time from when this order lands until your first post-restart order lands. Safety stock is the buffer for a late ship, a slow restart or a sales spike. Many founders use two to four weeks of sales, more for hero products.

Do this per product, not across the whole range. Your best seller might need sixteen weeks of cover. A slow colourway might need none at all, because you’ll still have stock left when the factory reopens.

Two quick checks before you lock it in:

• Use real sales data. Average your last 8–12 weeks of unit sales, then adjust for anything you know about, like a launch or a promotion. Don’t use a December spike as your weekly rate for March.
• Check the margin per unit. The ad-spend payback calculator works out contribution per order — what’s left after GST, landed cost, shipping and fees. If a product barely makes money, a bigger order just means a bigger bet on thin margin.

What does the bigger order cost in cash, and when?

This is where founders get caught. You don’t pay for an import once. You pay in stages, and most of the stages come before you sell a single unit.

A typical sequence for a factory order looks like this:

1. Deposit when you confirm the order (often a percentage of the factory invoice).
2. Balance before the goods leave the factory, or against shipping documents.
3. Freight and insurance to Australia, through your forwarder.
4. Border costs. business.gov.au notes that “most imports are subject to 10% GST”, and goods may also attract customs duty, import processing charges, brokerage and biosecurity fees (business.gov.au — Importing). Goods worth more than $1,000 generally need a formal import declaration, which is why most commercial importers use a licensed customs broker.
5. Local delivery from the port to your warehouse or 3PL.

Here’s an illustrative brand comparing a normal reorder with its pre-shutdown order.

Cash out before first sale	Normal reorder (8 weeks)	Pre-shutdown order (16 weeks)
Units (300 a week × weeks of cover)	2,400	4,800
Factory invoice at $12 a unit	$28,800	$57,600
Deposit at order (30%)	$8,640	$17,280
Balance before shipping (70%)	$20,160	$40,320
Sea freight and insurance	$2,200	$4,000
Brokerage and local delivery	$600	$900
Import GST (10% of goods + freight, duty assumed nil)	$3,100	$6,160
Total cash out	$34,700	$68,660

Illustrative only. Made-up brand and costs. Duty depends on the product’s tariff classification and whether a free trade agreement applies — your broker confirms it. Import GST is worked out on the value of the goods plus transport, insurance and any duty; figures rounded.

The pre-shutdown order ties up almost $34,000 more than a normal one. That money leaves between October and January, and it comes back slowly — one sale at a time, through February, March and April.

If you’ve measured your cash conversion cycle, you’ll recognise the problem. Inventory days jump because you’re holding sixteen weeks of stock instead of eight. Supplier credit days go negative because you paid a deposit months before the goods arrived.

Worked out your number and it’s bigger than your bank balance? See what funding could fit your import. The enquiry takes about a minute and doesn’t involve a credit check.

Can you avoid paying import GST at the border?

Sometimes, and it’s worth looking at now rather than in January.

If you’re registered for GST, the import GST you pay at the border usually comes back as a credit on your BAS. But you have to pay it first, and you wait for the credit. A quarterly lodger whose stock clears in January claims it on the March-quarter BAS, which for most quarterly lodgers is due on 28 April (ATO — BAS due dates). That’s a few months of cash sitting with the government.

The ATO’s deferred GST scheme lets approved importers pay GST on imported goods through their monthly BAS instead of at the border. The GST and the matching credit usually sit on the same BAS, so for many businesses the cash effect is close to nil. The conditions to know:

• You need an ABN, GST registration, online lodgement and electronic payment.
• You have to report GST monthly. If you’re quarterly now, you must switch first. A switch to monthly takes effect from the start of the next quarter.
• Your lodgements and payments need to be up to date.

The timing is the point. Elect monthly lodgement this quarter, and it starts from 1 January 2027 — just in time for stock clearing in January and February. Leave it until January and you’ve missed this shipment. Talk to your accountant before you switch, because monthly BAS is more work every month.

When does borrowing for the pre-shutdown order make sense?

Borrowing for stock works when it funds timing, not a guess. A few honest tests:

• The product has a sales history. You’re ordering more of something that already sells, not launching an untested line at sixteen weeks of cover.
• The margin holds at landed cost. After freight, brokerage and any duty, each unit still leaves healthy contribution.
• Sell-through is realistic. On your real weekly rate, the stock clears within the cover period you planned.
• The rest of the business still breathes. After the deposit and balance, you can still pay for ads, wages, rent and the January returns.
• You’ve stress-tested a late ship. If the post-restart order lands three weeks late, you have a plan — a buffer, a pre-order page or a clear “back soon” message.

If those boxes are ticked, funding the gap is usually cheaper than the alternative: running out of your best seller in March, paying for air freight, or losing ad momentum you spent months building.

The common structures for a young brand are an import and supplier deposit facility, a short-term loan for one big order, or a line of credit for online sellers you draw for the deposit and the balance, then pay down as stock sells. Unsecured options are typically $5,000 to $500,000, sized on turnover and bank statements. For bigger orders, a property-secured loan from $20,000 can go further. The inventory finance page explains how lenders size stock funding.

A worked example: the brand that ordered by product, not by range

Illustrative only — a made-up business. A Brisbane activewear brand sells about 300 units a week across 20 products, all made by one factory. The founder’s first instinct is to double the whole range. That would be roughly $69,000 out the door before February.

Instead, she splits the range into three groups:

• Five hero products that make up most of sales: 16 weeks of cover plus a three-week buffer.
• Ten steady sellers: 12 weeks of cover, on the basis that a short stockout is annoying, not fatal.
• Five slow lines: no extra order. Current stock lasts past the restart.

The total order lands well under the double-everything figure, and it puts the money where the sales are. She pays the deposit from cash and funds the balance and border costs with a facility she’ll pay down from February and March sales. She applies to switch to monthly BAS in October, so she can apply for deferred GST before the January clearance. And she gets the factory’s restart date in writing, with a confirmed production slot for her first post-holiday order.

The result is a bigger order where it counts, a smaller one where it doesn’t, and no scramble when the factory goes quiet.

A pre-shutdown checklist

• Supplier’s last production date, last ship date and restart date confirmed in writing.
• Freight booked, with transit time from your forwarder.
• Weeks of cover worked out per product from recent sales.
• Contribution per unit checked at full landed cost.
• Cash mapped: deposit, balance, freight, brokerage, duty, import GST, local delivery.
• Deferred GST and monthly BAS discussed with your accountant.
• A plan for a late post-restart shipment.
• Funding arranged before the deposit is due, not after.

Ready to place the order but short on the cash to do it?

Ordering big before Chinese New Year is a sign of a brand that sells. The hard part is that the factory wants paying months before your customers pay you. That’s a timing problem, and timing problems are what sensible stock funding is for.

Our side of it is simple. Enquiring takes roughly 60 seconds, and there’s no credit check when you first enquire — your credit file isn’t touched just for asking. We don’t send your details to a pile of lenders, so you won’t get a flood of calls from strangers. A real person who understands importing and online stores reads your enquiry, looks at your situation and calls you to talk it through. One request: fill the form in accurately. Your real monthly revenue, how long you’ve been trading and whether you own property let us point you to the right option first time. Have your pro forma invoice and sales numbers handy for the call.

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