What the Lunar New Year Taught Us About Surviving — and Staying Reliable — in Apparel Manufacturing

With less than two months to go before the Chinese Lunar New Year, many factories are already preparing for shutdowns.
From mid next month, workers will gradually return to their hometowns, and logistics capacity will slow down or stop.
That means:
orders that need to be placed should be confirmed soon, otherwise delivery will likely be pushed to April or May next year.
Looking back at this year, what struck me most was how many changes the pandemic forced on businesses.
Some clients disappeared because their companies ran out of cash and were acquired.
Others had no choice but to downgrade product quality and switch to lower-cost suppliers just to survive.
These were never easy decisions — they were survival decisions.
At the same time, our own company was under heavy pressure.
Business volume dropped sharply, while we were carrying high mortgages after buying two apartment at the peak of the Dongguan real estate market.
We also welcomed a new child into the family.
There were moments when everything felt overwhelming.
We survived by tightening every cost, managing every detail carefully, and treating every customer seriously — not focusing on growth, but simply on staying reliable and staying alive.
And then, slowly, things began to change.
Recent two years, some buyers from companies that had shut down during the pandemic reached out again.
They are now with new companies, still in the same industry — and they came back to work with us.
That reminded me of something I believe deeply:
In foreign trade, long-term success doesn’t belong to the fastest or the cheapest.
It belongs to those who keep their standards, their promises, and their relationships — especially during the hardest years.

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