Epec's Blog | Electronics Manufacturing Solutions

Peak Season is a term that is thrown around the shipping industry and generally refers to one of 4 major shipping events during a calendar year: Lunar (Chinese) New Year, which ranges from January to February, Back-to-School, which ranges from June to August, “Peak Season”, the pre-holiday peak (from August to October), and Golden Week, the holiday that takes place from Oct. 1-7 and results in a complete manufacturing shut down.

As the 2023 U.S. holiday season rolls into full gear, it’s impossible not to also think about the 2024 Chinese New Year (CNY). Maybe it’s because the U.S. holidays are busy not only at work but personally as well, for many of us, and by the time we catch our breath, the CNY is already on top of us.

As we sit on the cusp of another festive/holiday/peak/Chinese New Year (CNY) shipping season, it feels like once again there are going to be new and challenging variables that we are going to have to navigate to be successful.

When the electronics world was preparing for the Chinese New Year (CNY) 2020, I don’t think any of us could have imagined what we would be planning for CNY 2021, and even fewer people would have predicted what we will be going to be up against in 2022.

The last 18 months have been some of the most challenging that many of us have had to deal with both personally and professionally. It has often felt like we were riding waves, coming closer to things getting a little more normal, only to have them change radically. Looking forward to the next 18 months, I don’t see those changes getting any easier for us or our industry.

Those of us who make our livings managing supply chain, the time of the year between Halloween and New Year’s Eve is always on the tense side. Known as the “Peak Season”, it seems to start earlier and earlier the more people turn to e-commerce.

New Normal. What is the New Normal? For those of us who work in electronics, most days it feels like a foreign concept. When you consider what our collective industries have gone through since 2018, when the U.S. vs. China trade war started, and the Section 232 and Section 301 tariffs went into effect, now into this Chinese New Year (CNY) and the global Coronavirus pandemic, it seems like the answer to that question is: normal is something we may never see again.

Every year, post Labor Day, most of us are focusing on getting “back to work” and recovering from whatever the summer holidays brought our way. As the weather starts to cool, and the sports start to change, those of us who work in supply chain management, procurement, and shipping immediately turn our eyes to what has become the constant fourth quarter challenge: getting our companies through peak season with no delays or surcharges.

The average American “holiday season” usually begins somewhere around Halloween and continues at a frantic pace through January 1^st.  For those of us who work in supply chain management, the holiday season has a completely different meaning. 

As the benefits and capabilities of vendor outsourcing continue to grow, it becomes more important to know what to look for before committing to outsourcing. Developing a sound evaluation approach while knowing what questions to ask of potential suppliers helps maximize efficiency, saving time and money down the road.