Probably my 10th Chinese New Year since living in China, and to be honest I still don't get it. But it's that time of year and it's probably good for my SEO to write about it. I try to write the blog and get it out on a wednesday as thats the day I take myself for an afternoon coffee and just sit down and write. But it's been a frenetic week with Chinese New Year, so alas its Saturday the 9th of February and doing it albeit a little bit of a rice wine hangover.
To some people Chinese New Year means fireworks, others it means local festivities in your town. To Chinese people it means massive train journeys home, seeing relatives, giving out lucky money and generally wishing for a prosperous new year. To traders, backpack manufacturers, and backpack design companies, e commerce heads, dropshi*ters, sorry I mean shippers it is dead time. Time and hours lost.
Even though the official holiday only lasts for the best part of a week, China's manufacturing world locks down for a month. Even more infuriatingly so, is that the date moves each year. As a company involved in the manufacture of backpacks, or any product for that matter some orders run with a degree of time managed efficiency that would make Northern Rail blush (if you don't like in England, you might struggle to get that joke). But our railway network is in disrepair. So it is hard to say to your client.
"Sorry, I don't know if I can finish your order before the end of January as there is a month long holiday that I think starts on the 6th February, but not too sure, and it lasts a month and people will be leaving the factory from the first week of January."
Well that is the honest reality of what it looks like on the ground floor here in China. There was a guy from California making custom book bags, as in he was purchasing raw stock here and then adding his personal touch to each bag in the US. He ended up flying it all in because we just missed the dates. So the lesson is this, be prepared for the unexpected. We are here working with backpack factories to facilitate what we hope is a painless, or at least heavily sedated novocaine induced approach to manufacturing. We try to take the sting out of the problems. But there are some times of the year when we need you to work with us, and that time is now!
Quoting backpack sample manufacture takes time
"Design a Backpack" services as in the super amazing tech drawings we create take a little longer
Backpack manufacturer takes ALOT longer.
However when we do all trundle back into work shuffling our feet and holding our stomachs from all the overeating in the beginning of march, we do so with a new vigour. Free for the best part of a year for another monumental holiday that shuts down the country. Speaking about shutting down the country, something's absolutely have no words.
That is Guangzhou South Station and I think I took the video on thursday or friday afternoon. It pretty much sums up the state of the country right now. Everyone is going somewhere and they have got something to do and it is eating, sleeping, drinking, laughing, chatting., watching movies, but it certainly ain't backpack production.
However we are pleased to announce that backpack factories come back online around the 14th February, so we can resume quoting and sampling then. In the meantime if you want to read about how we handle backpack development and the kind of services we offer head over here:
https://www.idealabgz.com/backpacks
If you want to check out our instagram, which at the moment is pretty quiet given there is no work for us to do then you can head over here.
@the_idea_lab_guangzhou
For our facebook, to be honest I am struggling to get my head around what to do with it, but for now I think I just like the idea of the page as a place to post my blog posts. Anyway that's over here. Feel free to like the page or share some comments, I think this is all good for SEO too.
https://www.facebook.com/TheIdeaLabGuangZhou/
Totally we have zero interest in twitter, so thats a no go.
However if you want to email us you can do via
enquiry@banfa.co.uk