All flights but one cancelled.
Tomas met me at Manchester airport. My transit through the airport was pretty quick, not many checks - 30 second chat with an official medic guy.. not all staff wearing masks.. compared to Bali or Doha airports - a pretty poor show I thought.
It all felt pretty depressing. Tomas drove me back to Sheffield, and straight to AW. Seeing the burned out Block B I knew would be difficult, but the physical sight was.. well there are no words..
I met with the team, who have all been through a gamut of emotions. I was here to take charge and lead them, I had to be strong. It had been only 6 days since the fire, and what they had achieved in that time is beyond belief.
We have a pretty good stock control system, so we know almost to the penny what stock was lost, really fortunately we had a lot of over-spill stock held in outside warehouses plus in our remaining three units on site. It has been a massive disaster but lots of lucky things like delayed shipments meaning that stock was saved. For example, we shipped face masks by air from China, they were due to be delivered on Friday but came Monday. Just in time for Borris Johnson to decide masks are actually a good idea.
The hottest selling thing right now is fashion masks.. and we have them.. but selling fast.
I'm happy to report that many essential oils back are online, some soaps, the olive oil soaps and we are working hard to get other production items online. A China container just came this week, and an Indonesian one that came last week is now online. So there is actually quite a bit of new stock available. The websites need cleaning up and that is work in progress, but you can see it happening fast.
In the meantime we have been looking for a new home for AW, our plan (right now) is to use the remaining units as production only, this would potentially double our old production abilities. And all the finished stock and imports go to a nice new warehouse.
We have viewed some big beautiful places, as yet not settled on where to go. Our landlord says he can rebuild the old unit as quickly as possible and we could move back there. That is also a good and likely option, but we would still need a big temporary location. I'm working on it. Lots of options, we identified about 10 possible locations around the area, and have been viewing big sheds all week.
We just got the phone line back on, fast internet rather than tethering to mobiles is expected by Monday. It's gradually coming back to a new normal.
Thank you so much for all your massive support, all the messages that just keep coming, and the faith you put in us by continuing to order. Our new normal is a bit extreme.. but the first steps are being taken.
In my weekly newsletters you have followed me around the world, on various journeys..India, Nepal, China or Indonesia.. this journey is a different type on a different road .. the road to rebirth and then resurgence. .
We have to do this, not just for the charities we support, not just for the 60 plus staff at AW, not just for the thousands of artisans and their families who depend on us.. We must do this for you.. our customers who complete the circle.
I thank you for your support.
Now let's get back to business..
I hope you are staying safe, wearing a mask and getting used to the new normal.
Take care
More updates next week.
