Every year the same thing happens: containers that were booked in good time arrive in week 45, the yard is full, carrier collections are running late, and everybody wants their goods put away first. This notice sets out how we handle inbound during peak season so that you can plan around it rather than negotiate in the middle of it.
Book your inbound slot before the vessel sails
From September onwards every inbound delivery to a LESIGOU Overseas Warehouse needs a booked slot. Send the booking as soon as you have the sailing schedule, not when the container is already at the port. A booking needs the expected arrival date, the number of pallets or cartons, the total weight and volume, and whether the load is palletised or loose-loaded. Containers that turn up without a slot will still be accepted, but they go to the back of the queue and we cannot commit to the 48-hour inbound turnaround.
Send a complete ASN
The advance shipping notice is what lets us receive quickly. It should carry the SKU, the barcode, the quantity per carton, the carton count and the carton dimensions. Where the ASN matches what is physically in the container, goods are normally checked in, counted and available to sell within 48 hours. Where it does not, we have to count carton by carton, and in November that means days rather than hours.
Label at origin, not in Europe
Barcodes applied in the factory are far cheaper than barcodes applied in a European warehouse, and they remove a whole step from the critical path. If you are sending goods that will later go into FBA, tell us before shipment so we can plan the FBA Transshipment and, where needed, the relabeling work. Mixed-SKU cartons should be marked as such on the outside.
Dangerous goods and batteries need longer
Pure batteries and products with batteries fitted require compliant channels and compliant storage, and the paperwork is reviewed before the goods move, not after. Send the UN38.3 test report and the MSDS with the booking. Building this into the plan a few weeks earlier is the difference between shipping in peak season and sitting on stock that cannot legally move.
Recommended cut-off dates
- Sea freight for Black Friday. Goods should be on the water by the second half of September and landed in Europe by the end of October.
- Sea freight for Christmas. Landed by the middle of November at the latest.
- Air and rail top-ups. Book by the end of the first week of December. After that, carrier capacity in Europe becomes the constraint rather than the first leg.
- FBA transshipment. Allow an extra week over your normal lead time, because Amazon inbound appointments are the bottleneck in Q4, not our warehouse.
Dispatch and carrier collections
Our warehouses keep dispatching through the peak, and orders received before the daily cut-off still leave the same day. What changes is the carrier network: local delivery times across France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK stretch in the last two weeks before Christmas, and there are national holidays when there is no collection at all. We publish the collection calendar for each site in the Warehouse Management System, and your account manager will confirm the local public holidays that affect your markets.
What we need from you
Give us a rough monthly forecast by SKU for Q4, even if it is only approximate. It lets us reserve the right amount of space and the right amount of labour at each site. If you are planning a marketplace campaign with a hard start date, tell us the date. Almost every peak-season problem we see comes from volume nobody warned the warehouse about.
