The two clocks: production time plus transit time
The single most common mistake is treating "shipping from China" as one number. It is two. The production lead time is the factory turning your purchase order into finished, packed goods. The transit time is moving those goods from the factory to your warehouse. They run one after the other, and the production clock usually starts only once your deposit has cleared and your sample is approved.
Whenever a supplier tells you "30 days," ask which clock they mean. Many factories quote you the production time and stay quiet about freight, which is the half you actually wait the longest for. Get both numbers, in writing, before you build a launch date around them.
How long does production actually take?
For goods made to your specification, production typically runs 15 to 45 days. Where you land in that range depends on a few concrete things:
- Stock or near-stock items with minor changes can ship in 7 to 15 days.
- Standard custom orders at a normal quantity sit around 20 to 35 days.
- New products that need tooling, a custom mould, or a dedicated PCB add weeks before the first unit is even made, often pushing the first run past 45 to 60 days.
- Large quantities stretch the clock because the line can only produce so many units per day.
One thing that quietly adds time before production even begins: sample approval. If you have not signed off a golden sample yet, the back and forth on samples can take one to three weeks on its own, and a careful factory will not start the bulk run until that sample is locked.
How long does sea freight from China take?
Sea is how most orders move, because it is by far the cheapest per unit. The number suppliers quote is often port to port, which is roughly 18 to 30 days to the major ports of North America or Europe. That is not the number to plan around. Door to door, the real figure, you should budget 30 to 45 days, because the sailing is only the middle of the journey.
A door-to-door sea shipment includes the booking lead time at the Chinese port, the truck from the factory to the port, terminal and loading handling, the ocean leg, destination customs clearance, and the final delivery truck at your end. Two more points to factor in:
- FCL versus LCL. A full container load (FCL) is usually faster and more predictable. A shared container (LCL) waits to be consolidated with other cargo at origin and deconsolidated at destination, which adds several days at both ends.
- The destination port matters. A West Coast US port is a shorter sailing than an East Coast one. Inland delivery beyond the port adds rail or trucking days on top.
How long does air freight and express take?
When you need goods fast, you pay for the sky. Standard air freight runs about 8 to 15 days door to door, covering the airport booking, the flight, customs, and delivery. Express courier through DHL, FedEx or UPS is quicker still at roughly 3 to 7 days, because the carrier moves the goods and clears customs as one integrated service.
The catch is cost. Air is priced on chargeable weight, which is the greater of the actual weight and the volumetric (dimensional) weight. Bulky, light products get billed on their volume, so air only makes sense for small, urgent, or high-value shipments. The usual play is to air-freight a small first batch to start selling, then move the bulk by sea behind it.
How long does China to Europe rail take?
If you import into Europe, rail is a real middle option. The China to Europe rail service runs about 25 to 40 days door to door, which sits between sea and air on both speed and cost. It is worth pricing when sea is too slow for your launch but air is too expensive for the volume. For importers outside Europe it rarely applies, so sea and air remain the two practical choices.
What quietly blows your schedule out
The averages above assume nothing goes wrong. These are the things that regularly add days or weeks:
- Chinese New Year. Factories close for one to two weeks (late January or February, the date moves each year) and many workers return slowly afterward. The run-up is a capacity crush and freight prices spike. This is the biggest single timeline risk in the year.
- Golden Week in early October and the Q3 to Q4 peak shipping season, when space on vessels tightens and rates climb.
- Customs holds and inspections at your destination, which can park a container for days if paperwork, HS codes, or declared values do not match.
- Port congestion and blank sailings, where carriers skip a scheduled departure and your cargo waits for the next one.
- Sample rounds and quality re-work, where a failed pre-shipment inspection sends a batch back for repair before it can leave.
How to plan the timeline backwards
Work from your required arrival date, not from today. Pick the date the goods must be in your warehouse, then subtract, in this order: final delivery and customs, the ocean or air transit, the production lead time, and the sample approval window. Add a safety buffer of one to two weeks for anything that touches a holiday or the peak season.
A clean rule of thumb for a sea-freight first order: budget roughly 8 to 12 weeks from deposit to delivery once you include sample sign-off, and treat anything faster as a bonus rather than a plan. For a repeat order of a product the factory already tools and stocks components for, you can often cut that significantly.
Where Mila Sourcing fits
Slipped timelines almost always trace back to a gap nobody was watching: a sample that sat unanswered, a factory that quoted production but not freight, a booking made too late to dodge the holiday rush. We run the whole sequence inside one WhatsApp thread you can see, so production checkpoints, sample sign-off, and the freight booking are tracked against your real arrival date rather than a vague promise. When a date is tight, we tell you early whether sea, rail, or air is the honest choice for your volume. That coordination is built into Sourcing Activation and Full Production Management.
Related, if you are costing and scheduling a China order right now: