Coco - our girl in China - tells me that the two containers trapped in Ningbo port because of the lock-down have finally been released and on the way. Local media say just one case of the Delta variant was found in the port triggering a massive lockdown for over a week.

One of the drivers was confined to his cab for the duration.. poor chap that can't have been nice.

Mr Chatterjee - our man in India - was trying to convince me to go to India, apparently India is now on the Amber List.. and you can fly to Goa - quarantine in a hotel and then meet suppliers. Interesting, I'm checking out the possibilities. I do know that cases are dropping quickly there and the vaccination drive has finally kicked in at an impressive rate.  According to the BBC a hundred million doses in the last 19 days. 

I also learned that Indonesia may relax entry rules next week.. so finally a bit of good news, and light at the end of the tunnel.

Fraud alert!

This week in Spain we received a nice order - over €6000 and the customer requested to pay by bank transfer, so as always we sent a proforma invoice with the bank details to make the transaction.

Somehow.. we don't know how.. the customers email address was hacked. That email was deleted, and another sent from an email address that could be mistaken for an AW Artisan email address, with the same proforma invoice but the bank details altered to a Turkish bank account - and a very unlike us "URGENT" demand for payment. .  Fortunately google flagged the email as possible spam and the customer thought to check..

It was a close call and flung us all into a bit of a flap.. I'm not sure how to prevent this from happening. Much safer to always pay by credit card, gives you more protection and control.

Anyway.. lots of things happening that are good at AW.. it's getting busy now. It's almost September.. and before you know it the Christmas season is here. We have curated an Autumn Selection for you.... 

Lot's of articles in the news about stock shortages - and we have had lots of shipping delays one way or another - we are doing our best to contain prices and get sufficient supplies. Our man Bryant and his team in the UK are really on it, chasing everybody up and working on supply solutions and sourcing new products from new places.. even (get a grip) the good old UK.. We really think we'd be in a good position with our EU warehouses and streamlined (Brexit beating) export plan to distribute UK made products in Europe as well as the UK.. Do you make anything? Would you like to supply us? Drop us a line.. obviously you must be able to supply fully compliant products in volume and at a commercial price for the open market - bearing in mind we sell to retailers..

Take care, have a great weekend, be kind to someone...

David