Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is a very important day for All Chinese, regardless of the place you are in or whom you are with.   It is the day where everyone in the family sit together to celebrate and have reunion dinner.    Fireworks, presenting gifts to elderly and kids.    Married and elders give red packets containing lucky money in the Chinese New Year tradition.      In China, there are many other regional customs; the importance of buying gifts, decorations, food to clothing varies.

CNY preparation:

• Every family do spring cleaning – to sweep away any ill-fortune in hopes to welcome luck
• Doors and windows will be decorated with red colored paper- cut with popular themes: “Happiness”, “Wealth”, “Longevity”.

There will be 15days holiday beginning on the first day of a new moon to the full moon on the Lantern Festival day.

Things to note if you are working in/with factories:

• Holidays last for 3 weeks & some factories will be closed 1 week earlier – closed before 8 Feb and reopen on 1 March 2010.
• Employee turnover can be high after Chinese New Year which is typically when companies pay out annual bonuses to workers.   This means that on return to work quality problems may occur since staff who know your order and requirements may have left the factory.  For this reason it is important to schedule regular quality control around this time.
• Some factories will choose to remain closed after the holidays if in financial difficulty.   Some factories without large orders may extend their holiday period to save on labour costs.
• This is the 1st major holiday of the year where most migrant workers get to travel home to their province.   Travel in China will be chaotic in the extreme.
• Some factories will stay open in exceptional circumstances but this really is the exception and clients should expect to be paying high overtime fees.

The run up to Chinese new year is always a race for production to finish before factories close.    Given that factories in China will be closed for much of February ODM is now advising clients to plan all orders with factories in order to avoid the rush.

Whilst our China Buying office will close for a holiday, ODM offices in HK and Singapore will only close for very short breaks and will be operating normally throughout Feb, 2010.   Our HK staff will remain in constant communication with factory managers and our QC team for critical projects.

Update – when is CNY 2011