Fire at Ancient Wisdom

Update 28th July 

From the 13th of July we have been dispatching orders from our remaining units.  We now have some production back up and running, more stock is been added every day.  Stock that was previously ordered continues to arrive - including plenty of new lines. A night shift means we can dispatch more orders from a smaller space. I am happy to report we are back to 60% capacity and have about 65% of the products already back in stock.  We are turning most orders around within three to four days. Thank you for your support. 

Here is a message to you from our Managing Director, David.

Posted 6th July 2020

A devastating fire at Ancient Wisdom HQ on Friday 3rd of July night completely destroyed Block B the largest of our three warehouses at this site. It was at night and nobody was there so nobody was harmed. Thank God.

There is no sugar coating it, it is a major blow to AW our production, drop-shipping, dispatch area, showroom, offices. Gone.

I will never forget being woken at 7.37am (my time) by Tomas, and seeing his face framed by a burning warehouse. It seems from the CCTV a bin in the car-park area combusted and the flames once inside the warehouse spread rapidly, the whole block burned through within an hour.
How it happened we don't know fully yet, the fire service will be making a report.

If you can bear it you can see the local news report here.

As you can imagine everyone at AW is in shock, me included. But today we start the rebuild.
I have received many messages of support from suppliers, customers and competitors. You have no idea how much of a comfort this is. Thank you.

The good news is we do have stock held in other warehouses, and in our European distribution centre. We are confident we can get some production up and running soon as most of the raw materials is the surviving warehouse.

Tomas & Katka and the amazing staff of AW have already spent the weekend planning a way forward.
We will find a temporary warehouse for order dispatch, and bring all stock we have there - and boot up dispatch. Production we will recreate permanently in one of the surviving warehouses.

So I'm asking you to bear with us for the rest of July, to give us a chance to rebuild , your support as always is greatly appreciated.

If you have an order with us, we will probably be cancelling it, crediting your payment this week, so sorry for the inconvenience. Customer service will be doing their best to make this happen.
All websites will update over the next few days to show what stock we actually do have, when that is live we will let you know.

On a positive note, I think we can rebuild the warehouse bigger and better and more geared to dispatch orders efficiently. The stock will need replacing so all those family businesses in India, Indonesia and China are going to get a welcome boost at a time they really need it. It will of course take months for that stock to come, but I'm hoping by Christmas we are back on course.

Please spare a thought for the staff at AW, they just overcame a host of covid-19 challenges, and are now hit with this. Fate is unkind.

Stay safe.

David