The pool parts year has a shape everyone knows and many plan around badly. Demand collapses in autumn, stays low through winter, and spikes hard at opening. The mistake is treating that as a demand-side problem when it is a lead-time problem: by the time the spike is visible, it is too late to order for it.
Build the timeline backwards
Work back from when a service company needs the part on the van:
| Stage | Duration |
|---|---|
| Production | 2–4 weeks, depending on order value |
| Factory to port, export clearance | ~1 week |
| Ocean transit | 3–6 weeks depending on lane |
| Import clearance and destination handling | 1–2 weeks |
| Port to your warehouse, receiving, putaway | ~1 week |
| Total | 8–14 weeks |
Now anchor it. If opening season starts in April in your market and you want stock on the shelf in March, the purchase order goes out in December at the latest — and December means the container leaves before Chinese New Year, which is its own constraint.
Ordering in February is ordering for late May. By then the rush is half over and you spent it saying "two weeks".
The Chinese New Year problem
Factories in China close for one to two weeks around the lunar new year, and effective capacity is reduced for roughly a month — the ramp-down before and the ramp-back after, when staffing takes time to return.
The date moves between late January and mid-February. Two rules:
- Get orders in by mid-December if you need production complete before the holiday
- Do not believe a lead time quoted across the holiday unless the supplier explicitly accounts for it
Ask directly: is my order scheduled before or after the holiday? A supplier who has planned their year answers immediately.
What to order in Q4
Order in Q4: the core range from the 80/20 analysis. Sealing components, pump wet-end parts, filter and valve service items — everything with stable, predictable demand tied to installed base rather than to weather.
These are exactly the parts where a stock-out during the rush is most damaging, and they are cheap enough that carrying them through winter costs little.
Defer: high-value, low-frequency items. Heat exchangers, complete assemblies, anything where a single unit ties up meaningful capital. Order these against demand and quote the lead time honestly.
Deliberately over-order: the parts you ran out of last spring. Look at last year's stock-outs and add them at above your calculated reorder quantity. The cost of extra stock on a $3 seal is trivial; the cost of being out of it in May is a customer.
Use the quiet period for the things you never have time for
Q4 and Q1 are when the range work gets done, because nothing else is competing for attention.
Validate new parts. Order samples and run proper fitment validation. In April nobody has time to measure anything.
Fix your product data. Photograph parts, write descriptions, clean up cross-references. This is the asset that makes the spring rush efficient and it is impossible to build during it.
Run the 80/20 analysis on the season that just ended, while the data is fresh.
Place a trial order with a second supplier. Winter is exactly when you can afford for a trial to disappoint. Doing it in March is not a trial, it is a gamble.
Freight timing
Ocean freight rates and space availability both tighten before the lunar new year, as everyone ships ahead of the closure. If you can be ahead of that wave — booking in November rather than late December — you get better rates and less risk of a rolled booking.
The other lever is consolidation. One larger shipment beats three small ones on both freight cost and administrative overhead. Which is another argument for planning the whole spring range in one Q4 order rather than reacting three times.
A working Q4 calendar
| When | Action |
|---|---|
| October | Run 80/20 on the season just ended. List last year's stock-outs |
| Early November | Finalise the spring order. Request samples for anything new |
| Mid-November | Place the purchase order. Confirm production is scheduled pre-holiday |
| December | Book freight. Validate samples while production runs |
| January | Container ships. Clean product data, photograph new items |
| February | Receive, inspect against baseline, put away |
| March | Stock on the shelf before the phone starts ringing |
The mistake worth naming
The most common Q4 error is under-ordering on the cheap, high-volume parts to protect cash — and then air-freighting them in April at several times the ocean rate.
Run that arithmetic before you cut the order. The carrying cost of three extra months of stock on a low-value part is almost always less than the freight premium on an emergency reorder, and far less than the customer who found another supplier while you were waiting.
Sourcing
POOLPOINT's 50-piece minimum with mixed cartons is built for exactly this order shape — one Q4 order covering twenty or thirty core SKUs without over-committing on any single one. Tell us your target on-shelf date and we will work the production schedule back from it, including where the lunar new year falls that year.
