Greetings from Spain where I'm working with Toni and the team at AW-Artisan.
As England enter's lockdown for the second time and Liverpool gets totally tested we enter unknown territory.
Last lockdown, the things that were selling fast at AW flipped dramatically.. seems totally different things sell online than in shops.
Keep reading for some potentially profitable insights and what I like to call - retail opportunities. Plus we have a growing problem with whales..
First I have to report that the "A" team in the AW warehouse have been really making things happen. Packing all time record numbers of orders - catching up and even getting on top of the flow of orders. For the first time in months (if not years) we can actually quote 1-3 working days dispatch time. It's been a huge team effort, from everyone including tweaking software (thanks Raul in KL) to devising impressive systems (Tomas on form) to making it happen (James & Kane), but thanks must go to our all star order picking & packing teams.. Great work..
Last week we had two containers arrive from Indonesia with Natural Coconut Lamps on them. Lots of people had registered to be notified when they came back in stock.. so the automatic system sent out the messages and within minutes orders were coming super fast. Both shipments sold out within the day of arrival. Most of those orders were from legitimate AW customers.. but I worry that some were from "Whales" - these are ticket tout type traders who buy up stock to take it off the market, and thus get to control the onward supply. I think it's not nice.. I'm looking into how to control this. It's great when a product is well accepted but unfair played like this. You can read last week newsletter here.
One person who is really happy (and I'm delighted for them) is Pak Odang from Ubud. We gave him a reorder that is basically called.. we will buy all you can possibly make..
With his wife - in charge of the shades and his eldest son - in charge of shaping the leaves, they can produce quite a bit of stock. But one thing I learned about the artisans of Indonesia, they don't want to go too big, there is no way they will take on a factory and lots of staff. As long as they can make enough for a reasonable lifestyle they have no wish to upset their work life balance. And maybe there is something to be said for that.
Other products that are being hit by "whales" I feel are Dinner Candles, Atomisers, Soap Flowers and some Essential Oils.. all things that seemed to sell well in the last lock-down. If you want to be notified when stock comes back online - you can click that little envelope next to where it says out of stock.
Now that we are getting on top of the orders - it's worth noting that you don't need to panic buy to get stock.. anyway if you order small and often - our Gold Reward system applies automatically and discounts - Gold reward applies when you order within 30 days of your last order. If you are particularly pushed for stock quickly - we have just switched back on (by popular demand) priority shipping. We switched it off when it became apparent if simply wasn't fair when only priority orders were getting shipped and everyone else had to wait. But now it seems we can handle it fairly.
Trouble in China. Lack of containers..
It's been an ongoing problem all summer. It's like this.. at the beginning of the pandemic the shipping companies panicked and mothballed a percentage of ships. Then it turned out that they overdid it and now there is a worldwide shortage of slots on boats. In the past as soon as Ringo (in Indonesia) or Coco (In China) had enough stock in company warehouses to fill a container they would message Bryant (our manly import manager in the UK) who would get quotes and book a container with a shipping agent.. The shipping agent's local guy would call our agent to say the truck will arrive with an empty container at 7am Thursday.. and you can get organised with a loading team, packing lists and last minute deliveries. The truck would arrive on the dot and you load it.
Now even an hour before it comes our agents are getting calls to say no container is available, and asking us to rebook. Bryant has been asked to pay "guaranteed booking fees" which we have paid and then had containers - even so - cancelled. It's like a bloodbath out there.. the big boys are pulling strings and stealing our containers. Coco was even asked for a bribe to get our actually booked container to actually arrive. She was hopping mad.. at one point last week she had four containers of stock in our China warehouse, (it's designed for two) even the offices were full of cartons, the candle factory full.. and even had to leave some stuff in the carpark overnight.
Of course at AW we never pay bribes, but Coco's fury and anger, Bryants persuasion eventually got us some containers. Needless to say we are going to run out of some faster selling stock because of this.
Meanwhile.. we have some magic new stock coming online.. some great deals. Dropshipping is adding new stock also.. check out AW-Dropship.com (also almost on next day delivery) .
Have a peaceful weekend, don't stress.. stay safe.