Summer toy orders are decided by timing more than by choice. The same product that sells out in May is dead stock in August, and the difference is entirely about when it lands.
This is how we see the season from the factory side: what to stock, and what has to be ordered first.
Work backwards from your season
Start at the date your customers start buying, not the date you want to order. From there subtract the transit time for your route, the clearance time, and our production time. That date is your order deadline, and it is usually earlier than buyers expect.
Your forwarder can give you the transit leg for your port. We can give you production time for the specific order. Between those two numbers you can work out when to place it — and if the answer is “last month”, that is worth knowing now rather than in June.
What to land early
Big, high-value items. Large water cannons and electric bubble guns are the products that carry a summer order’s margin, and they are also the ones that look dated on a shelf once the season has started. Fifteen-nozzle cannons and the motorised bubble guns want to be in shops before the first warm weekend, not after it.
Seasonal novelty is the same. A themed machine is worth nothing in the wrong six weeks and everything in the right ones.
What can land later
Small, cheap, repeat-bought items. Wands, mini sticks and solution sell continuously through the season and keep selling after the peak, because they are bought by people topping up rather than by people preparing.
Solution especially. A buyer who has sold a hundred bubble guns in June needs solution in July, and that is a second order rather than a first one.
The mix that actually works
A summer order with one product in it is a bet. A summer order with four is a portfolio, and it spreads the risk of being wrong about any one thing.
We would build it like this. A large-ticket item for margin: water cannons or motorised bubble guns. A volume item for turnover: mini wands or 35ml solution units. A novelty item for the shelf: something shaped, a food shape or an animal. And solution in bulk, because everything you sell in the first category depends on it.
Squishy toys and capsule novelties sit outside the season entirely, which is worth having — they keep a shop busy in the months when nothing else does.
One practical note on volume
Order in cartons you can actually sell through. Buying deeply on an untested design saves a little on freight per unit and risks a lot on stock you are still storing in September. Buy to your evidence, reorder on what moves, and treat the first season as the season that tells you what the second one should be.
Our minimum is 5 pieces per design and designs mix, so a seasonal order can be a broad trial rather than a single bet. Ask us for carton figures on anything you are considering. WhatsApp: +86 173 4881 6397.