Greetings from Affinity Park, Sheffield - HQ of AW.
Hope all is well with you, and you are keeping busy and safe.
It's almost the Bank Holiday weekend and according to Borris everything is looking up in Blighty.
Last week I was telling you about George and the Crack Buying team at AW.. I introduced you to them and asked if you'd like to lend a hand.. you can read about it here.
First of all I like to thank everyone who put forward suggestions to the buying team - normally I would reply, but there was a lot! So please forgive me not thanking you individually, but a BIG THANK YOU to everyone and some really fresh original ideas. Lots and lots of food for thought and stuff to really get cracking with.
Looming stock shortages.
I don't wish to sound alarmist, but we live in troubled times and in the best of days developing products and shipping them is challenging.. now with covid, shipping crisis, Brexit, travel bans and raw materials shortages - it's getting to be hard work.
I messaged Mr Chatterjee in India with some of your suggestions for new products and asked if it was possible to make samples. He said he would try but it was difficult right now. I called him on Whatsapp for a chat. He is OK and putting a brave face on things, but of his factory staff all but one person was self isolating or down with covid. The children's home we support, all the kids are OK but all the teachers are infected. Mr Chattergee's own sister has it. Fortunately no-one is severely ill, but to say the situation is bad, is an understatement. He tells me the official figures are massively understated by the government in denial.. it is probably ten times worse. Your best wishes and prayers would be appreciated, if you want to send a message, I'm happy to pass it on.
Then our main German candle supplier informed us that they had trouble buying paraffin wax, prices if you can even get supplies at 60% up. We have several purchase orders open with them, but no dates for delivery.
Coco in China who also runs the AW Soywax candle factory there, has a similar problem with Soywax supplies. The trade war with America has frozen imports of soybeans. Coco also tells me that shipping to the UK is such a pain that many factories proratise orders to Japan or Korea because there are no problems, so we find ourselves at the back of the list.
Ringo in Indonesia is still struggling to find container shipping prices at anything like workable. It was just easing when that ship got lodged in the Suez Canal and now it's back to square one, all the empty containers are in the wrong places.
India was just getting back to a decree of normality, and we managed to ship a few containers over the last few weeks. One arrived from Delhi today..
All this is going online right now.. details below.
But Mr Modi was convinced that India had beaten coronavirus. With massive Nationalist hubris encouraged the big Hindu festivals, the cricket matches and (of course) his election rallies to go ahead. Within weeks the terrible consequences.
You can blame coronavirus of course, but I blame evil Nationalism - leaders standing in front of flags, telling us our particular country is best..(better than all the rest) really just to control our minds.. sorry for the rant.. must take deep breaths..
Anyway last week I introduced you to our beefed up buying team.. We have two new recruits to our Customer Service Team.. We are also beefing up the AW CS team.. (OMG can you say "beefed up"? maybe it is sexist or veganist or something).
I'd like you to meet: Daniella & Michael.. we took the whole team outside to get a group picture next to the AW Buddha..
I asked if they could offer some odd insights - so we could get to know them a little. Michael (on the left of the tree): "I enjoy flying my drone while walking my dog"
Daniella (on the right of the tree): "I make my own crystal healing soywax candles, I love animals and all things metaphyscial." and our Kerry (to the left of the Buddha added: "I'm a member of the UK wide Rock choir and like to volunteer for charity events when I can". And our other Kerry (behind Michael) "Well l just love our caravan and camping in Whitby"
Not to be left out, Urszula (on the right of the Buddha) let it be known she is a member of the imfamous Boomshanka belly dancing group..
So next time you chat to our team.. you can say Hi - I have seen you in the newsletter.
I hope you have a lovely weekend.
Please just take a moment of it, a minute of it... To pray/meditate/send good karma to all of India, but especially to any of your friends there and also to our Mr Chatterjee and his family and team.
Your best wishes and prayers would be appreciated, if you want to send a message, I'm happy to pass it on.
Take care
PS:
I know many of you will want to help financially, you have done this generously before in the first wave. But I have asked Mr Chatterjee if they need any support, he says; no not at this time.
( AW has already sent additional funds for the children's home). But maybe you (and us) can support India more sustainably by simply stocking and marketing more Indian products (not just from AW - there are many good importers) this would be a small but important win for everyone.