BUSINESS

Order fulfillment - lead time

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A fan wrote in asking what is the expected lead time when buyers place orders at trade shows. Our answer is that it depends on what type of products and the logistics of your fulfillment; if your products are Build-to-order (BTO) or Make-to-order (MTO), or if you already have a warehouse of stocked products ready to ship. To find out more wikipedia has a great description on order fulfillment.

We also understand that the gift industry is very different from the fashion industry. At gift shows, most products are EVERYDAY products. Which means, retailers would generally want them in 2 weeks. If you sell seasonal products, ie, holiday items, some would say deliver 2 months before the holiday season starts. That allows you more time to accumulate your orders. Nonetheless, retailers would sometimes wait up to 6 weeks especially after a trade show knowing that most vendors will be extremely busy stocking and shipping orders. Anything longer than 6 weeks, we find that retailers may forget that they have even placed an order!

If your products are MTO, you will have more time to produce them since retailers know they are getting limited edition, unique items, customized for them. If your products are stocked, be prepared to ship immediately. Nonetheless, most retailers have their own ship dates and cancel dates. If you cannot meet their requirements most will reject your shipment even if it’s only a day late!

As for the fashion industry, we are not too familiar, since it’s not our field, but from trade shows we’ve attended and friends that we know, we believe they usually sell 2-3 seasons ahead. Vendors take orders based on scheduled deadlines set by their own factories. They will tell retailers that all orders have to be placed by a certain date if not they won’t be able to get the collection at all. This way the designer can give the factory a set number of pieces to produce. They also advise retailers of the approximate delivery dates. It all depends on how strict the vendors are with their own factories. In addition, since most clothing factories are based overseas, there are a lot of quality control issues, import and export regulations that usually result in longer lead time.

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