Back-timing from the shelf date
The only fixed point in a footwear season is the one your customer owns: the day the pair should be on the shelf or the listing. Everything upstream is derived from it, in the reverse order of the production chain. The discipline is called back-timing, and it is the difference between a season plan and a season hope. Start at the shelf date and walk backwards through arrival, shipping, production, sampling and briefing - and the calendar tells you what has to be true this month for the shelf date to hold.
| Milestone | Typical reference | Derived from |
|---|---|---|
| Shelf or listing live | Your season start - the fixed point | Your market's calendar |
| Arrival and receiving | A working buffer ahead of the shelf date | Shelf date |
| Shipping and customs | Lane-dependent; confirm with your forwarder | Arrival date |
| Bulk production | About 45-60 days after sample approval | Ex-factory date |
| Sampling | Development and counter, about 15-30 days | Bulk start |
| Brief and route decision | Before sampling - the true start of the season | Sampling start |
Every figure above except your own season start is a reference range, confirmed in writing per program - but ranges are enough for planning, and planning is what the table is for. Walk a spring shelf date backwards through it and the arithmetic speaks for itself: the brief lands in autumn, the counter-sample is approved in winter, bulk runs late winter into spring. A buyer seeing that chain in autumn has options. A buyer seeing it in February has one.
The table also exposes which milestones belong to whom, which is where back-timing becomes a coordination tool instead of a private calculation. Your market owns the shelf date. Your forwarder owns the shipping leg and its lane-specific reality - which is why that row says "confirm with your forwarder" and why the desk asks for the destination in the brief rather than assuming a port. The factory program owns the production and sampling rows, and the desk owns keeping those rows honest against the calendar they will actually enter, peak weeks included. A season plan built once with all three parties reading the same table survives contact with the season; one built in isolation gets renegotiated under pressure, and every renegotiation under pressure costs more than the meeting that would have prevented it.
Why peak season moves every number
The reference ranges in the table are calm-season figures, and the calendar has nothing to do with your selling seasons - production peaks run ahead of everyone's selling seasons at once, because every buyer in the hemisphere is back-timing from similar shelves. Ahead of peak, two things happen at the factories: queues lengthen, because lines are booked, and material supply tightens, because the cluster's suppliers are feeding every line at once. The desk quotes bulk "about 45-60 days after approval, longer before peak season" as a single honest sentence for exactly this reason. The planning response is not heroics; it is an earlier brief. A program that needs twelve calm weeks should not enter the queue in the loud weeks - it should enter before them, which moves the brief further back and makes the back-timing table the season's most-read document.
What stock does for a calendar
The stock route exists partly because back-timing has gaps. Between "range confirmed" and "OEM arrives" sits a window the calendar created and production cannot close - and stock closes it, because finished shoes carry no sampling and no production queue. Cartons of 12 pairs, mixed models allowed, are picked on confirmation and typically dispatch within days, which turns a season's dead zone into a selling window. Three uses repeat every year: bridging, from range confirmation to OEM arrival; testing, putting a few cartons of an unproven style on the shelf mid-season to see if it earns a place in next year's OEM program; and rescuing, refilling a size run that sold through faster than planned. Each use spends stock's speed where the calendar is least forgiving. The route is described on the stock catalogue page, and first-order structure in the lot buying guide.
Reorders: the second order decides the season
Season planning that ends at the first delivery is half a plan, because the first order is a question and the reorder is the answer. What sells through in weeks three to six - at which sizes, in which colors - is the season's real data, and the calendar question becomes: can the reorder arrive while demand is still there? Stock reorders answer fast, for the reasons above. OEM reorders answer slower: the program is known, so sampling is skipped, but bulk still takes about 45-60 days after approval, and peak-season queues apply to reorders exactly as they apply to first runs. The planning move is to reserve the decision window: know before launch which styles would be reordered, and at what sell-through signal, so the reorder triggers on data rather than on panic, at a moment the stock route can still serve. The minimum logic behind both routes is on the sneaker MOQ note.
A working cadence, sketched
Illustratively - and the desk stresses that every program's dates are confirmed in writing - a two-season rhythm looks like this: brief next season while the current one is selling; sample while the current one is at its peak; approve and confirm bulk as the current one clears; receive as the next one opens, with stock cartons covering the hand-off weeks and mid-season reorders riding the stock route. No heroics anywhere in the chain - just each step starting one step before it becomes urgent. The full reference ranges for both routes sit on the MOQ and lead time page. If you have a season start date and want it back-timed into a written plan, that is a two-line brief: send the date and your channel through the request form, and the desk will return the chain with its ranges - and the OEM route is described on the OEM guide page for the steps in between.