Ask ten suppliers for a lead time and you'll get ten answers, none of them with a date range you can plan against. That's not evasion — it's that "lead time" is four different clocks stacked on top of each other, and most quotes only describe one of them.

This page breaks out all four, with the actual numbers we work to, and then builds them into an order calendar you can plan a quarter around.

Wholesale Lead Times & MOQ — 2026 Sampling, production, transit by freight mode, minimum order quantity, and the holiday windows that slip orders Business days from order confirmation SAMPLING & PRODUCTION — FACTORY Sample (1 unit, pre-production) 3 bd Standard orders 5–10 bd Large / customised orders 10–20 bd TRANSIT — FREIGHT Express 5–10 bd Air freight 7–12 bd Ocean freight 20–30 bd Rail freight 30–50 bd Land transportation 30–50 bd 0 10 20 30 40 50 business days (bd) Door-to-door, add customs clearance + last-mile: typically 2–7 business days more. MOQ explained 50 pcs per design or style • Per design, not per order • 10 designs × 50 = 500 pcs total • Negotiable with order history • Raised by: custom shape, new tooling, foil or multi-pass print • Held at 50: printing your artwork onto an existing size and shape Quick test A high MOQ quoted for a print-only job usually means you're being priced for tooling you don't need. 2026 factory calendar — the windows that slip orders CNY 15–23 Feb Golden Week 1–7 Oct Q4 peak — book freight early JanFebMar AprMayJun JulAugSep OctNovDec Anything that must ship before Chinese New Year should be confirmed by mid-December. The first two weeks of March are the busiest queue of the year.

Lead time is four clocks, not one

Clock What it covers Who controls it
1. Sampling Brief → artwork → mockup → physical sample in your hands Factory + courier
2. Production Order confirmation → goods made, QC'd, packed Factory
3. Transit Port / airport to your door, by mode Freight forwarder
4. Customs & clearance Duty assessment, inspection, release, last-mile Neither of you

Most quotes collapse 2 and 3 into one number and silently drop 1 and 4. Those are the two that blow up a launch date. Price the whole chain, not the middle.

Processing time (production)

Our published terms:

Order type Processing time before shipment
Standard orders 5–10 business days
Large or customised orders 10–20 business days

Note "business days." Five to ten business days is roughly one to two calendar weeks — and around Chinese public holidays it is longer, because the whole supply base stops at once (see the calendar below).

Sampling: 3 business days. If you need a physical pre-production sample before committing, we produce it in three business days — plus courier time to your door. That is fast enough that sampling is usually worth doing even on repeat designs, because the sample is a real production run of one, not a hand-made mock-up.

Transit time by mode

Mode Transit time Best for Watch out for
Express 5–10 business days Samples, urgent top-ups, small parcels Highest cost per kg; impractical above a few cartons
Air freight 7–12 business days Mid-size restocks, high-value lightweight goods Volumetric weight pricing — decor is bulky, so measure before you quote
Ocean freight 20–30 business days The default for bulk Port congestion and blank sailings; book early in Q4
Rail freight 30–50 business days Europe-bound bulk as a middle option Less predictable than ocean on some lanes
Land transportation 30–50 business days Overland corridors Least schedule visibility

These are the ranges we publish to buyers. Door-to-door, add customs clearance and last-mile — typically 2–7 business days on top, more if the shipment is selected for inspection.

MOQ: what "50 pcs per design" actually means

Our standard minimum order quantity is 50 pieces per design or style.

Read that carefully, because it's more permissive than it sounds:

  • Per design, not per order. Ten designs × 50 pcs = 500 pcs total. You are not committing to 50 of a single SKU if you want a range.
  • Negotiable. MOQ moves with product, order size, customisation scope, and the terms of an ongoing relationship. A buyer placing a second order with a track record is not priced like a first-time single-design enquiry.
  • What drives it up: bespoke dimensions, new moulds or tooling, and unusual finishing (foil, multi-pass print, hand-applied gold). What keeps it at 50: printing your artwork onto an existing size and shape.

That last point matters if you're evaluating suppliers. A factory quoting a 500 pcs MOQ for a straightforward printed tray is pricing for tooling you may not need.

Total lead time: three worked examples

Scenario Sampling Production Transit Door-to-door
Restock, existing design, express — 5–10 bd 5–10 bd 10–20 business days
New printed design, sample + ocean 3 bd + courier 10–20 bd 20–30 bd 33–53 business days
Re-order, ocean, booked early — 5–10 bd 20–30 bd 25–40 business days

Note the middle row: a three-day sample does not add three days to your timeline — it adds three days plus the courier leg. If your launch date is tight, overlap the sample with artwork finalisation on other designs in the range rather than running them in series.

For a retail launch, plan the worst case in the relevant row and add a two-week buffer. Buyers who plan the middle of the range are the ones who air-freight at 4× cost in the last week.

The calendar nobody sends you: Chinese public holidays

This is the part overseas buyers can't model, and it's the biggest single source of slipped dates.

Holiday 2026 dates Effect on your order
National Day ("Golden Week") 1–7 October 2026 Factories and the entire supplier base close. Orders confirmed in the last week of September effectively start when the factory reopens.
Mid-Autumn Festival 25–27 September 2026 Short break immediately before Golden Week — the two together create a ~2.5 week quiet window.
Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) Statutory holiday 15–23 February 2026; New Year's Day itself 17 February The big one. Factories wind down days before, many workers travel home for weeks, and output ramps back up gradually through late February and early March.

Practical consequences:

  • Anything that must ship before Chinese New Year should be confirmed by mid-December. With 5–10 business days of processing and 20–30 days of ocean transit, a January confirmation lands after the holiday — and the factory's queue behind it is already long.
  • The first two weeks of March are the worst time to place an urgent order, because every buyer who waited is now in the queue at the same time.
  • Book ocean freight earlier than usual in Q4, when Golden Week and pre-CNY volume both compress capacity.

What actually delays orders (ranked)

  1. Artwork that isn't production-ready — wrong resolution, no bleed, RGB files for a process that needs CMYK. This is the single most common cause of a missed ship date, and it's entirely within the buyer's control.
  2. Late approval on a sample or mockup — every day the buyer holds a proof is a day added to the ship date.
  3. Chinese public holidays — see above; unavoidable but entirely predictable.
  4. Customs inspection — unpredictable, but bufferable.
  5. Peak-season capacity — Q4 is everyone's Q4.

Note that three of the five are buyer-side or calendar-side, not factory-side. Lead time is mostly a planning problem, not a production problem.

MintiHome is a manufacturer, not a trading company — charger plates, decorative trays, wall décor and vases, wholesale from 50 pcs per design with custom printing to your own artwork. See our wholesale charger plate range, our shipping policy for the full terms, or book a factory tour before you commit to a programme. Planning a new design? Our custom print process checklist covers artwork handover and approvals, and our charger plate size guide covers sizes and table settings.