The Supplier Who Closes for Three Weeks

The dates that matter are not yours

Most businesses work out their own closing dates carefully and never ask anybody else's.

Which means January is planned around a return date that assumes suppliers, manufacturers, and carriers return at the same time.

Frequently they do not, and some close for considerably longer than a small business does.

The result is a January where you are open, ready, and waiting for a delivery that was never going to arrive that week.

Ask for two dates, not one

The distinction that catches people out.

A supplier reopening on the fourth is not dispatching on the fourth.

They return to a backlog of orders taken over the closure, and yours joins the queue rather than jumping it.

So ask when they reopen and when they expect to be dispatching normally, which are frequently a week or more apart.

Ask the same of your carrier, since collections and delivery times both take time to return to normal.

Plan against the second date, which is the one that governs whether you can do the work.

Who to ask

• Anybody supplying materials or stock.
• Your carrier or courier.
• Subcontractors and trades you use.
• Your accountant and anybody with a deadline.
• Whoever maintains the site or the systems.
• The bank, for anything needing a person.

The fifth is the one that becomes urgent rather than inconvenient, since a site problem during a fortnight when the only person who understands it is unreachable is a different order of difficulty.

Order before, not after

The practical consequence and the reason to do this in December.

Anything you will need in the first fortnight of January should be ordered now, before closures start.

That includes consumables, packaging, and anything with a lead time, none of which feels urgent while you are still busy.

Work backwards from the first job in January and ask what has to be on site for it.

Where something cannot be ordered in time, knowing that now means telling the customer in December rather than apologising in January.

The cost of ordering early is holding stock for two weeks, which is almost always less than the cost of not having it.

A worked example

A business planned to restart on the third of January with two jobs booked.

Their main supplier closed on the twenty-second and reopened on the ninth, dispatching from about the twelfth.

The materials for both jobs would not have arrived until the middle of the month.

They found this out on the nineteenth by asking, ordered both sets before the closure, and stored them.

Both jobs ran on schedule and the customers never knew there had been a question.

The whole thing was one email to a supplier, sent in time.

Tell your own customers what it means

Since your constraint is now their timeline.

Where a January job depends on something arriving, say so when booking rather than when it slips.

Give a realistic date that accounts for the supply chain rather than for your own availability.

A customer told in December that work will start the third week of January accepts it, and one told on the fourth that it has slipped does not.

That conversation is easier now than it will be, and it is the same information either way.

Check who is reachable if something breaks

The version of this that matters most and is asked least.

If the site goes down on the twenty-seventh, who fixes it, and are they available.

If a payment system fails, who do you contact, and is that a person or a queue.

Ask whoever maintains your systems what their arrangement is over the period, and get a route that works rather than assuming.

Where the honest answer is that nobody is available, that is worth knowing so you can decide whether to change anything before you close.

The safest version of that decision is to change nothing on the site from about the twentieth, which removes most of the ways it breaks.

Note the answers for next year

Because these dates are broadly consistent and nobody records them.

Keep a short list: each supplier, their closing dates, their dispatch return, and how long the backlog took.

Next December that list is the plan rather than a round of asking.

It also shows which suppliers were accurate and which were optimistic, which is useful information about them generally.

Add the actual outcome in January rather than only the promise, since the gap between the two is the number worth planning against.

Your own dates are a supplier's problem too

Worth turning around, since you are on somebody else's list.

Customers who depend on you are planning their January against your return date, and most of them will not ask.

Tell them, plainly, before you close: when you stop, when you return, and when you are realistically able to start work rather than answer email.

Those two dates differ for you exactly as they do for your suppliers, and stating both is the courtesy you are asking for from everybody else.

It also prevents the first week back being spent explaining to four customers why nothing has started yet.

The counter-case

Some of this is not knowable.

Suppliers give optimistic dates, backlogs vary, and weather affects January in ways nobody forecasts in December.

Ordering everything early also ties up cash in a month where it is scarce, which is a real trade rather than an obvious win.

And for a business with no material dependencies at all, the whole question is a five-minute check that everybody is back.

Ask for both dates, order what January needs now, and find out who is reachable if something breaks.

This week

1. Ask each supplier for closing and dispatch dates.
2. Plan against the second date.
3. Work backwards from your first January job.
4. Order what it needs now.
5. Tell customers the realistic date.
6. Find out who is reachable for failures.
7. Write the dates down for next year.

Step two is the distinction that decides January, since a supplier reopening on the fourth is working through a backlog rather than dispatching your order that morning.

The general version of this problem is covered in when your supplier cannot give you a date.

Frequently asked questions

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