In the first part of this article, I looked at 5 common reasons for sea shipping delays from China.
Here are 5 less-common reasons that can lead to delays with your shipments. Many of these are factors that can’t really be planned for.
Often when our clients enquire about the transit time for their container to reach their port, we like to add a week over the transit time stated by the shipping line.
To this, they often come back stating that their forwarding company told them it takes a week less.
In my work at IMEX Sourcing Services, I regularly work with a lot of new importers, especially new e-commerce sellers selling through the Amazon or eBay platforms. Most importers, when first starting out are very excited & charged up about the new venture & want to get things moving as quickly as possible.
When first importing from China or from any other country for that matter, there is a steep learning curve & it normally takes 2-3 shipments for an importer to understand the process flow & all the terminology & acronyms involved in International trade.
With limited understanding of the import processes & that of the working style of Chinese factories, comes increased risk, especially quality risk as well as the increased likelihood of incurring losses on the first import from China due to getting the numbers wrong.
Here I look at 5 common mistakes, I often see with new importers first starting out of China.