Greetings from Spain
How are you doing?
Last week I was telling you about two AW projects, one big one in the UK and one small one in Spain. How they are both important. The UK one comes with an amazing time lapse video..
You can read about it here.. I also gave you some fake news by mistake...
So I have an apology to make..
Last week unilaterally changed Mother's Day from the 14th of March to the 22nd of March.. several eagle eyed readers pointed out. It was just a mistake. I googled it and somehow in my rush typed the wrong date.
So just to make absolutely crystal clear mothers day is..(according to google) linked to Easter, which is different each year as it is determined by the lunar calendar. The UK's Mother's Day always falls on the fourth Sunday during the period of Lent, when people typically give up things like certain foods or bad habits for the days leading up to Easter*.
So it's so important to get the details right.. or you get in a right royal mess.
It's only two months ago that Boris was proudly bragging about his Free Trade Agreement. Remember under the Christmas tree on 24th December. His oven ready deal was just for starters and in fact the Brexit FTA was a lovely Christmas feast with lots of fish included.
You couldn't make it up.. But don't take it from me.. here is the link.
The point is all that work put into the deal and all that fighting for the Scotish fisherfolk.. they missed a small detail. Sure the fisherfolk might be able to catch a bit more fish.. but they were not able to actually sell those fish, at least not efficiently because of the same trade deal details. And day by day more details that were not really appreciated come tumbling out of the woodwork.
There was an article in the Times that seeks to blame economic modelling, how difficult it is to predict such things. It actually mentions that.. who would know that goods containing parts wholly or partly made outside the EU and re-exported to the EU would not be duty or tariff free?.. which turns out to be... erm most things. All the other stuff, like cheese, fish, lamb.. has a whole load of other regulations to climb over - the same as any other 3rd country.
Fortunately Covid dominates the news agenda, so not so much bad news is making the MSM..
The unforeseen details are casting long shadows.. many consequences have yet to unfold.
What I'm saying is.. Brace yourselves.. expect stock shortages and increased prices.
Even here in Spain.. in the supermarket, food from the UK is either missing or double the price. There are no lamb chops and salmon is crazy expensive. Can this be good for anyone?
Back in June 2016, I was in the UK with Coco, my wife. She woke me at 3am to tell me via her Chinese news app that the UK had voted in favour of Brexit.. they knew before the BBC!
Maybe because we had years of experience importing from Asia.. we had already figured out the fatal detail.. that whatever trade deal they could make it was impossible to avoid charging customers vat. And country of origin issues would be impossible to overcome without staying in the customs union.. Those details were pretty clear even then..
So we moved quickly to open the Slovakia and Spain warehouses.. a huge and basically unnecessary investment but thank goodness we did it.
Not that it has solved all our problems - far from it.
Three weeks ago we shipped 29 pallets of stock from Sheffield to AW Spain.. we took all the advice we could, even checked things with Spain customs beforehand, we used the biggest shipping company.. with access to their top clearance experts..
Lots of paperwork, duty to pay, papers to produce.. we did it all, satisfied everything.. only one product couldn't make the grade, and held up all the shipment. Ironically it is a base oil.. aromatherapy grade olive oil...Originally from which country? You guessed it.. Spain! they said but it could be used as a food product and we need a licence to import foods. Finally they agreed to release 22 of the pallets that we knew for sure didn't have the dreadful Olive oil on them. Then on Wednesday a team of customs officials turned up and wanted to open random boxes and started photographing everything, another load of questions and papers to supply followed. Including and I suppose this is a compliment.. Why are our prices so cheap?
Maybe we will have to send the olive oil back to the UK in order to release the rest.. it's very complicated and hard work these days.. thank you Boris.
Anyway I don't want to depress you with our problems, on the plus side lots of stock has been arriving in the UK warehouse.. some as fast as it comes is selling out.. seems like many of our customers are doing a roaring trade.
Dropshipping orders are up hugely on the same period last year, this is the covid effect I suppose, and we are adding staff to help keep dispatch times to the minimum.
Gift shops (they are non-essential apparently) are due to reopen on April 12th and we are already seeing customers getting organised for this date.. Easter is coming and the wedding season could be great for business.
So it's not all bad.. the gift trade might be more complicated but it's still a great business.
Hope you can think positive, and have a lovely weekend.
Take care, stay safe and remember those details matter..
PS
* Mother's day I'm reliably informed is the 14th of March :)