Greetings from Spain
Hope you are well, welcome to February. It's almost Valentine's day, but not like a normal one.
Nothing is normal. Last week I was telling you about the new way we source and develop products in Indonesia, also how we managed to ship from the UK to Europe.
None of it normal.. but you can read about it here.
It's almost Valentine's day, as I just mentioned and there is still time to land some V-deals.. see below.
The vaccine rollout in the UK is going amazingly well, at last, something to feel good about.
Snow is forecast, big snow.. so I hope you can bunker down and like grizzly bears hibernate until it passes.
Meanwhile here is a roundup of what's happening around AW..
Coco in China. - CNY is cancelled.
It's the holiday season in China, as Coco and team breaks for Chinese New Year. We are taking the opportunity to move to a new better and bigger warehouse.
There is the AW candle factory also moving so it's quite a big job. Everything from the internet to toilets to be organised. She was trying to get everything done before heading back to the hometown for the CNY festivities. But there has been a big media campaign to try to persuade people not to make the annual trip this year. Even though the Chinese government are claiming almost no cases and that China is safe, they are making it hard with expensive tolls on the motorway, limited rail tickets and.. a 500rmb (about £56) shopping voucher per person if you stay home. So for the first time ever Coco and the family are staying in Yiwu for the holiday.
Mr Chatterjee in India. Things are improving.
It's Mr Chatterjee's birthday so I called him up. He was in the children's home that AW supports. It's just a few minutes drive from the factory so he is often there checking on the teachers and wellbeing of the kids. They were just having a weekly computer lesson.
"How's it going there with the virus?" I asked him. It's good, he said - he told me no cases now in the area, people are relaxing, shops are open, things are getting back to normal. It seems they have developed a good natural immunity. Although most people still keep a distance and wear masks in public, it feels a lot safer. The factory is in full swing, we are giving them plenty of orders so life is looking up a bit.
Ringo in Indonesia. Can begin to breathe again.
He was really struggling for space. We had to put on hold shipments because the cost of shipping containers had exploded to where it would double the price of products just to ship them. So the warehouse was backed up to the point they were working in the carpark and the offices and staff room were full of stock. But we are loading containers again, a slight price drop means we can ship some more expensive items without a massive price impact. This week Ringo is sending me by courier a parcel of product samples for checking and development. So hoping to get some new products on the way.
James in the UK - our warehouse manager.
He is manfully juggling thousands of pallet loads of stock as a team errects racking in the warehouse. It's a massive project, £200k of racking over 6000 pallet locations. We are blindly investing in Brexit Britain without really knowing if we will really need so much capacity. But somehow I feel if we have the capacity we will find a way to use it. Tomas is still in Slovakia, but next week (if all goes well) he is moving back to the UK. After quarantine he will start work on making our office space beautiful.
We are still managing to ship truck loads of orders to the EU via Slovakia, it's really hard work and expensive but we can do it. I'm hoping longer term to keep about half the EU business from the UK.
Meanwhile I'm in Spain, sales here are up massively as EU customers switch from the UK warehouse to Spain or Slovakia. We just took on an extra warehouse guy.. we will need more soon.. and Quentin a delightful French webmaster to look after marketing and customer service of all the new French customers. So it feels like everything is in flux, but we will find our way somehow or other.
So everything is happening, just not in a normal way.
Stay safe, stay warm.
More less normal news next week.