Inventory planning for China-sourced goods is fundamentally different from domestic sourcing. The lead time is not two to five days — it is six to fourteen weeks depending on what you are buying, where it ships, and what happens at the border. Getting the reorder point wrong in either direction is expensive: stockouts cost sales and customer trust, overstock ties up cash you could be using elsewhere.
Breaking Down the China Lead Time
Most importers undercount their total lead time because they only track the freight portion. The full chain has three distinct segments:
1. Production lead time. The time from placing your purchase order to the supplier having finished goods ready at their factory. For standard catalogue products this might be two to three weeks. For custom items — your logo, your packaging, your specs — expect four to eight weeks minimum. During peak periods (Q3 ahead of holiday, post-Chinese New Year catch-up), add another one to two weeks.
2. Pre-shipment and transit time. This covers loading, export customs in China, and ocean transit. Sea freight from major Chinese ports to the US West Coast runs 14–18 days. To the US East Coast, add 5–7 days. Europe varies by destination port: 25–35 days for northern Europe, shorter for Mediterranean. Rail via the China-Europe land bridge is 18–22 days but capacity can tighten.
3. Import customs and last-mile. This is the segment people forget. Customs clearance at the destination port can take 1–3 days when everything goes smoothly, or 2–3 weeks if your goods are selected for examination. Add 2–5 days for trucking to your warehouse after release.
Add these up: a custom product, sea shipped to the US East Coast, could be sitting on a 12-week total pipeline. That is the number you plan against, not the shipping time the forwarder quotes.
What Is a Reorder Point?
The reorder point (ROP) is the inventory level at which you place your next purchase order. By the time the new stock arrives, you should still have enough units left to meet demand — ideally with a small buffer.
The formula:
ROP = (Average daily sales × Lead time in days) + Safety stock
If you sell 20 units per day and your total lead time is 70 days, you need to reorder when you have at least 1,400 units remaining — plus whatever safety stock you carry to absorb variance.
How Should You Estimate Lead Time Variance?
Lead time from China is not fixed. A four-week production run can slip to six weeks because of a component shortage. A port strike can add 10 days to your transit. These are not rare edge cases — they happen regularly.
A practical approach: look at your last six to eight orders and calculate the actual total lead time for each. Find the average, then find the maximum. Your planning lead time should be somewhere between those two, weighted toward the high end if the cost of a stockout is severe (lost sales, subscription cancellations, retailer chargebacks).
Some importers use a simple rule: take the average lead time and multiply by 1.3. That buffer absorbs most moderate delays without requiring you to hold 20 weeks of inventory.
Common Mistakes That Cause Stockouts
- Planning to the freight quote, not the door-to-door reality. Your forwarder tells you 16 days ocean transit. That is port to port. Add production, add customs, add warehouse receiving.
- Assuming the first order's lead time repeats. Suppliers sometimes hit the first order on time to win the relationship. Subsequent orders may be slower as they prioritize other customers or face their own supply issues.
- Not accounting for Chinese public holidays. Chinese New Year shuts factories for two to four weeks. National Golden Week in October adds another week. Orders placed in late January or early September need adjusted lead times. See our Chinese New Year shipping planning guide for specific dates and strategies.
- Using a single supplier for a critical SKU. One supplier means one point of failure. If they have a production problem, you have a stockout.
Practical Steps to Set Your Reorder Point
1. Pull your last 90 days of sales data and calculate average daily units sold.
2. Map out your last three to five orders from this supplier. Record the date you sent the PO, the date goods were ready, the date they arrived at your warehouse. Calculate total days for each.
3. Identify your maximum observed lead time and your average.
4. Decide on a safety stock buffer — typically 10–20% of your planning lead time demand for stable products, higher for seasonal or fast-moving items.
5. Set a calendar alert or trigger in your inventory system at the ROP.
If you want to stress-test your numbers against actual freight time estimates, the freight estimator gives you current transit time ranges by origin port and mode. That is more accurate than using a fixed number from memory.
What About Air Freight for Urgent Replenishment?
Air freight from China is fast — 3 to 7 days door to door — but it costs roughly 4 to 8 times more per kilogram than sea. For high-margin products a panic air shipment can make sense. For anything below $15 margin per unit, the freight cost will eat the margin entirely.
The better approach is to never need the panic shipment in the first place. Choosing between air and sea at the planning stage is worth reading before your next order cycle.
A well-set reorder point is cheap insurance. Getting it right takes one afternoon of spreadsheet work and saves you from the far more expensive scramble of running out of stock.