 The Chinese New Year 2021 is right around the corner and you need to know how to prepare your dropshipping stores in advance for this holiday where the Chinese are not working and whether you're dropshipping on eBay or Shopify. As long as you're sourcing products from China, you need to watch this video to prepare yourself accordingly. Quick intro, let's begin. What is up, everybody? Hope you're all having a wonderful day today. My name is Liran from AutoDS. I'm the content producer and I've also been dropshipping for the last four years. And as I've mentioned, this video is going to cover the Chinese New Year 2021 holiday which is coming up in less than one month. And since the Chinese are not working on this holiday, we have a lot of unsatisfied, mad and mean customers wondering where their packages are, opening up cases that their items were not received or not shipped out on time. And we do not want any of this trouble on our dropshipping stores. That is exactly why we created this video for you. So without further ado, let's begin. To start off, what is the Chinese New Year? Well, it's the New Year for the Chinese. If you haven't guessed that one yet, just like we have our New Year celebration between December 31st and January 1st every year, the Chinese have their Chinese New Year starting February 12th and ending on February 17th. That is the public holiday. Now the Chinese will continue celebrating after this date, but this is the public holiday between the 12th and the 17th of February, where the Chinese will not be working. Now keep in mind also that some Chinese even began their holidays before the 12th of February. Some even start one and even two weeks before. So we really need to make preparations and let our customers know what's going on. Whether you're dropshipping on eBay or Shopify, it doesn't matter. I will show you on both platforms how you can let all of your customers know what's going on. So there won't be any special surprises and even if there will be, I will prepare you guys for a counter on that scenario too. So let's begin. We know that the Chinese New Year is between February 12th and February 17th. Now what should we do? Let's start off by going through some of the common questions that dropshippers have during this time. And one second before we begin, I just want to remind you guys, if you are new to our YouTube channel, this is the part where you need to subscribe so that you can always stay up to date on all of the latest and all of the hottest topics that are coming out in the dropshipping industry, which is created from dropshippers for dropshippers such as yourselves. Hit that subscribe button right now and let's get on with the show. So the first question that people usually ask before this holiday comes is how will the Chinese New Year affect my dropshipping store? The Chinese are not working during this holiday between February 12th and February 17th. Some of them will not work even before that. So one way that it's going to affect your dropshipping store, the main way is your products are not going to ship out on time. There will be delays. You are not going to update your tracking information on time. The product will not ship out on time. The customers will notice this. The majority of customers notice when their shipments are delayed and they will not hesitate to reach out to you or just head on to PayPal or whatever method they paid you with and open a case over there without even letting you know we don't want this trouble on our stores. So that is how the Chinese New Year affects dropshipping stores. We will get to the solution soon. Let's just move on with the common questions and problems. Which suppliers are affected by the Chinese New Year? So anyone who's sourcing products from Chinese warehouses will be affected by the Chinese New Year. Sometimes you may find Chinese agents who are sourcing products from US warehouses. This is a different scenario. You need to reach out to that seller and ask him if he's working during the Chinese New Year. But in the majority of cases where you will find Chinese sources shipping out their products from Chinese warehouses, these are the products that are going to be delayed because they are not working during the Chinese New Year. So you can think of pretty much any Chinese source supplier like Aliexpress, Banggood, CJ Dropshipping and more. All of these suppliers will be affected so if you're working with any supplier who's sourcing from Chinese products, keep watching this video and we'll get to all of the solutions that you need to know about. The next frequently asked question is how long are the Chinese New Year shipping delays? So we know that the holiday dates are between February 12th and February 17th but as I've mentioned a minute ago, many Chinese workers stop working even a week or two before the start date. So we have at least two full weeks where the Chinese are not going to work and they will not be fulfilling our orders. So the Chinese New Year shipping delays are anywhere averaging two weeks and in some cases maybe even a little bit more. How can I avoid shipping delays with Chinese sources? So in some scenarios you may find that the product is being sold in different warehouses on the same product like in Aliexpress or Banggood or many other suppliers who are sourcing from China. On the product page you will see that there is also a UK warehouse, maybe warehouses from the Russian Federation, warehouses of course in the United States. So if you see that your supplier or the seller that you are working with is shipping from different warehouses, ask him if he's working during the Chinese New Year and which warehouses are working specifically and that way you'll get answers to those questions. You should do this mainly on your best selling products. Products that are not selling are probably less important but we will take care of those too. Start with your best sellers and reach out to your sellers, see if there's other warehouses that they are working with and if they are working during the Chinese New Year. The next question asked by many people is what niches are affected by the Chinese New Year and what does it mean what niches are affected? Well since you have the Chinese New Year and it goes around two weeks of not being able to ship out any of your products you should also know that there are other holidays that occur during the Chinese New Year and it's going to be hard to source products for those holidays because the Chinese are not shipping out anything during that time. So the first holiday that you have is Valentine's Day which is on February 14th. So if you want to prepare your stores for Valentine's Day I definitely do not recommend doing it from Chinese sources because they will simply not ship out your product on time. Your customer will not get the product on time for the Valentine's Day gift that they bought for someone else and they will be pretty mad about that. Another holiday that we have during the Chinese New Year is a holiday called Family Day which occurs in Canada on the 16th of February so if you want to sell products to them do not do it from Chinese sources. So let's get to the money time. How can we start preparing our dropshipping stores for the Chinese New Year? Let's begin for all of you guys who are dropshipping on eBay. Shopify your next on the list. So in order to start preparing your store for eBay the first thing that you want to do is schedule time away also known as vacation mode. On schedule time away there are a few things that you can configure to let the buyers know what's going on with your store. So the first thing that you can configure is whether you want to allow item sales or to pause item sales during this time. My recommendation is definitely to allow item sales we do not want to close our stores even temporarily but we do want the customers to know what's going on. So you're going to choose that you want to allow item sales and when you allow item sales you can put your store away for up to 15 days. If you don't allow item sales you can put your store away for 30 days. Now since we are allowing item sales we are only going to go for the maximum of 15 days and you can also set your start and your end date so in our case it's from February 12th to February 17th but we do want to start before because as I've mentioned the Chinese are going to start taking their holidays before so we're going to take 15 days back from the 17th. In our case we are going to choose February 2nd until February 17th. Now what happens during this time you can set an automatic response and all of your customers will read this response every time they enter your store so they'll get a message about your store that it's away. Let me show you guys really quick how it looks. Here is the time away on eBase platform. Once you click on schedule time away you can set your start and your end date and allow item sales while time is away. You do not want to pause so click over here set your start date and date and apply. Next you got your automatic message so click on that and write down the message. We are currently celebrating the Chinese New Year therefore all orders between the start date and the end date etc etc so once you set that ebay will put you on your time away and your customers will know what's going on before they even make a purchase from your store so those who do purchase already understand that the product will not chip out on time and they will not reach out to you with any surprise messages of where's our product why hasn't it been shipped yet and so forth. The next thing that you want to do on ebay is update your shipping policy accordingly to the new shipping times so even if a customer places an order you want the estimated shipping time to show a more precise time of when this product is going to arrive. We want to update the 11 to 23 business days to 11 to 35 business days you have that in your shipping policies i don't have to show you this example because if you're already drop shipping you know exactly where to find that your handling time should be updated to four business days or five business days i know that it's not as good as three business days ebay will rank you better if you have one two or three business days on your handling but again we do not want any surprises this way you'll have more than a month to deliver your product and that is more than enough for the Chinese New Year delays. The next tip to update your customers on what's going on is by updating the custom messages that you are sending your buyers after they successfully put an order on your store and AutoDS puts out that order automatically using the auto order method so let me show you exactly how that is done head to the AutoDS platform and click on monitors then click on orders processor and messages to buyers here you have the after order success message this is the message that is sent after AutoDS fulfills your order for you and sends a message to the buyer and i have a message template ready for you for this message that you should send the buyer over here in the blog that we have if you want the link to the blog you have it right under this video so copy this text it's a good example of a message that you should send your customers you can obviously create your own messages if you want to but if you need help you have it over here and as you see i and as you see i also put the triggers for AutoDS so it will automatically fill it in with the relevant information so copy that message head back to the AutoDS platform paste that message in the after order success message and then click on save changes that is how we will get that done it's that simple and now let's move on to the fourth solution that we have the fourth solution is to update your ebay template so you have your ebay template that you're using for all of your products you can update your template and add an extra text on the bottom reminding them of the holiday that is coming up so on every product listing that you have when the customer scrolls down he will see another message over there regarding the chinese new year but how can you do that for all of the products that you already have in your store let me show you let's take the ready message that we have on the blog now choose a template that you want to use on all of the products that you want to update with the new template and the new message scroll down a little bit you have your title description features about us shipping returns i don't know what you have in your template but in your shipping section if you don't have one create one and add that extra warning that we just talked about please note that we expect shipping delays during the chinese new year holiday from february 12 to the 17 thank you for your patience of course you can write whatever you want this is just a quick message to show you an example and once that is done go to your active listings now we want to grab all of our items and tell auto ds instead of using this default template that they already have i want you to override it with this template with that warning message on the bottom so grab all of your products click on bulk change and on template you're going to select that template that you just saved once you click on it click on save changes and now all of the products that you grabbed in that box selection will get the new template with that warning message about the holiday season that is coming up and that is the fourth way on ebay to let your customers know what's going on and once again combine that with the first three methods you don't have to use all four of these methods but i would definitely recommend it because this way you are filtering out all of the customers who can come out and say hey you didn't tell me that this is going on i didn't know that my product is not going to be shipped out on time so this way you're really protecting yourself in every single way possible that is more than enough for the ebay solution of how to let your customers know about the chinese new year and all of the upcoming delays that are expected now let's move on to Shopify the first thing that you want to do on Shopify to start preparing your store and let your customers know what's going on is by updating the announcement bar that you have on top and if you don't have an announcement bar it's really easy to set one up let me show you really quick how that's done head to your Shopify dashboard click on online store then under themes click customize on the right and your announcement bar should be in the header section on the top so let's wait for the left menu to load up click on header scroll down a little bit and you'll have the announcement bar so we're going to click on show announcement and as you can see the announcement bar just showed up on top now let's take a ready message that we already have in the blog below we are expecting temporary shipping delays during the chinese new year holiday between these dates i'm going to copy that text paste it over here on the left text field and once again it's updated on the announcement bar on top now why do we want to update the announcement bar i hope this one is obvious for you guys but one of the first things that your viewers will see when entering your website is the announcement bar on top so first and foremost we are going to let them know using the announcement bar now the second method to update your customers on what's going on on your Shopify stores is by updating your product pages accordingly this time you're going to have to enter your product page and in the product description add a warning message about the upcoming delays that are expected once again you have a ready message template in the blog that we have so i'm going to copy that text and this time we're going to do it using the autodesk platform because it's simply going to save us much more time this way so on the autodesk platform we're going to click on products now in the product section you need to highlight all of the products that are being sourced from chinese warehouses you can do this easily by creating product tags by the way but if you haven't done that let's just say that i want to update this product for now so click to edit then i'm going to click on description edit product description and on the bottom i'm going to add an extra text copying and pasting what i had there on the blog of course once again you can write your own message but here it is i'm going to click on save and i'm going to rinse and repeat this process on all of the products that we have from chinese sources and that is another way to let your customers know what's going on with this chinese new year holiday and the upcoming delays once again i encourage you to do this using the autodesk platform you'll see that it's much quicker and much easier than using the Shopify platform the next thing that you want to do on your Shopify platform is to set your email notifications after purchase what these email notifications are is these emails that your customers are getting every time they place an order on your store let me show you exactly what i mean head to your Shopify dashboard and click on settings notifications and order confirmation as you can see the order confirmation is sent automatically to the customer after they place their order here is where we also want to update them about the expected upcoming delays now do not be intimidated by all of this html and all of these triggers you don't have to understand it just get to the part where it says hi customer first name we're getting your order ready to be shipped we will notify you when it has been sent now what you want to do is click enter after that sentence but before the end case make sure that you're in between the else and end case so we created a line break now we're going to copy this text or once again create your own and paste it right over here so now the customer is going to receive a message hi customer's first name we're getting your order ready to be shipped will notify you when it has been sent and then we are currently celebrating the chinese new year from this day to this day blah blah blah all in that email and this is another great way to cover yourself and let the customer know what's going on now the next method to update your customers about the upcoming shipping delays is by updating your shipping policy also on Shopify so your shipping policy should be in your dashboard settings and legal pages unless you created another page for your shipping policy that is where it should be so navigate to the settings and then to the legal pages get to your shipping policy and here change the amount of business days how long it will take to reach the customer according to the chinese new year delays so in this case to the us we'll make it by 30 business days for example click on save and then you are protected also by your shipping policy so we updated the announcement bar we updated our product pages we updated our shipping policy now what do we do with customers who missed out anyway on the chinese new year holiday they missed all of the messages they didn't check your shipping policy hey it's their mistake but you will find a small number of customers who missed it out anyway and the more sales that you have the more you know exactly what i mean so we need to be able to reply to these customers who are reaching out to us and asking us what's up with the product shipping why didn't it deliver yet why don't i have tracking information yet so in this scenario again i prepared a message template for you now keep in mind these parentheses are not triggers you need to actually change the client's name with a client's name and your name or your store name with your name or your store's name so if you don't want to create your own message just copy this and use that to answer your customers who are asking you what's going on the next tip that i have for you guys to avoid these shipping delays is to diversify by working with multiple suppliers working with multiple suppliers is the best way to get out of these situations and not just the chinese new year holiday throughout the year you have all kinds of surprises like natural disasters and other things that are going on in the world so at some points some suppliers are going to stop working or they're going to slow down their shipping process and you won't want to lean on only one supplier who may cause these problems from time to time when you diversify working with multiple suppliers you are not putting all of your eggs in one basket it's much healthier for your business and your business will simply continue working even when there are problems i want to remind you guys that here at auto ds we support over 20 suppliers which means you have a reach to over 500 million products to choose from that is why you should not work with only one supplier my personal recommendation is to always work with three dropshipping suppliers if one is not good eliminate him and add another when you're working with three it's never going to get too messy or too confusing everything can stay under control and you can definitely maximize the potential of your dropshipping stores so diversify do not work only with chinese suppliers suppliers from the us are going to ship your items out quickly they may not always be as cheap as chinese suppliers if you want to know which are the best american suppliers we have blogs and videos ready on that subject too so diversify add multiple suppliers and this way your business will not be affected by the chinese new year holiday my next tip to you guys is to stay up to date with the e-commerce calendar for 2021 we have a link to the e-commerce calendar right below this video and on the blog below once you click on that e-commerce calendar for 2021 your google calendar will be updated with all of the special events and all of the holidays that we have coming up in 2021 and we're always updating this e-commerce calendar with dropshipping strategies for each special event what you should do how to prepare your stores for it and which products you should add to your stores that have a much higher chance of selling during these holidays so when you have your list of holidays for the upcoming year it's going to be much easier to prepare for them you'll have enough time because you'll see it in advance and you have the strategies that we are writing for you guys to help you on each and every special event so add that e-commerce calendar once again it's completely free and we are updating it all of the time the next and final tip that i have for you guys during the chinese new year holiday is to definitely not close your stores but if you are sourcing only from chinese suppliers you will notice a decrease in sales that is one reason why you should work with multiple suppliers and add also warehouses from the us that way your store will continue working during the chinese new year but even so you should take some time off during this time and learn dropshipping now what do i mean by this well we have a full course a to z on Shopify absolutely for free on how to find products that will sell create your e-commerce store and market your products the right way to start getting those sales this full a to z course will take you to where you want to go with your dropshipping business even if you have no skills and no prior knowledge whatsoever on the subject we also have an ebay dropshipping course for those of you who haven't started on ebay yet or for those who have started but are having some challenges trying to get those sales and profits this full walkthrough will take you on your dropshipping journey and turn it into a successful one that is all i have for you guys for the chinese new year holiday i hope that you found this video informational and if you did give us a like give us a share so that your friends and family will also have the opportunity to learn about the wild and amazing world of dropshipping and if you are new to our channel do not forget to subscribe so that you will always know about all of the hottest topics strategies product finding suppliers marketplaces and everything else that we have on the dropshipping world all of the latest news and updates all for free all for you from dropshippers for dropshippers thank you for watching see you in the next videos