Effects of the Coronavirus on a small business ​Day 2 (18/03/2020)

PLEASE READ AND SHARE (And Enjoy)

Massive Thanks for everyone’s comments on yesterdays and later in today’s blog I will let you know a few ideas that have been put forward.

Day 2 started much how I expected with lower than normal sales but not horrific, loads of leads to follow on bulk orders for Hand Sanitiser that have come directly from the Blog, Adam (Thank You) your lead may hopefully help us out a lot. The problem we have is we are only ordering based on Purchase Orders from the Public Services and Business’s and the price is going up, I don’t know if this will happen every day but the manufacturer is now being charged more for bottles, so the quote we give today may not be the same tomorrow. Hopefully they will stabilise but in the current climate who knows?

It was commented about me rambling yesterday so I will keep todays Blog shorter. My wife says I need to be careful in what light I show the company with my honesty and nobody at work has really given an opinion as to what I wrote yesterday but I will write from the heart.

In the workplace we are in some sort of bubble, there is no sickness and everyone who is supposed to be in, is in. The focus is picking orders, packing orders, answering customer messages, its business as usual. The manager is busy trying to ensure all of this is done while at the same time sending out the quotes to the companies that want hand sanitiser. One care home who contacted us, there local shop is selling a 250ml bottle at £24.99, even with price rises this should be sold for no more than £5 RRP and roughly £3ish trade to business’s. Today we bought £21000 worth of hand sanitiser that will go direct to public services and business’s from the manufacturer. We cant really afford to get it in to sell to the public but I may put it in stock on the website with a 3 week lead time?

It seems some of our emails haven’t come through so I am in contact with our web guys Gloversure who are working from home but manage to get it fixed so its following up on all these emails. Sales aren’t too bad overall but for some reason we have got a fair bit of international trade and its only when I see the news this evening the pound has fallen to a 30 year low, good for international sales but as most of our trade is in this country and most of the product we sell is manufactured in Europe or the USA it’s a nightmare long term and may mean price rises, especially on materials and dog toys. Even if you manufacture finished products like us the materials are coming from abroad so any drop in the pound is not good. Also a lot of what we retail comes from suppliers who import from China so these prices of ordinary day to day retail goods will rise unless the pound improves.

I spoke to various suppliers in the UK who are doing their best to support us, Highlander who we sell a lot of camping and outdoor gear are able to update us on stock levels and forthcoming problems, Kombat UK phoned us and I mentioned the blog, they have shared the blog on their Facebook page to show support. Claire had a webinar with Fidlock on new products and that had about 25 people from all over the world take part, this is so important as we have to keep on top of the game and be prepared for the end of the coronavirus and the fantastic products we distribute in the UK for them.

The manufacturing is going as normal with the worries being materials and trying to finish off Police orders and also make samples for potential orders, we get some products out but the demand on the manufacturing far outstrips our capacity and we are not under any circumstances going to put our prices up at this time of need. The manufacturing day finishes with our Head of Design asking me how we can possibly make samples for future orders and finish what we have for the Police. I don’t know myself but somehow we always seem to pull through. I am praying the coronavirus doesn’t hit our staff and halt production completely.

So without rambling on too much todays worries are increasing prices, shipping from the USA for fabrics this time not dog toys, as always the health of the staff and now the school and nursery closures, it a very hands on business and its exceptionally difficult to work from home but not impossible in some areas and we will need to start using more technology communicating by face time etc, but some jobs just can’t be done from home. Today’s positives, fantastic reaction from customers and friends from yesterday’s blog. This will hopefully come to fruition and sales not too bad. Nobody is sick in the work place and the health of everyone is more important than anything else so that’s a big positive.

Those that have read to this point we get to why I started this blog to get ideas and help from you our customers and friends, firstly we have had some fantastic leads for companies that want hand sanitiser and we have quoted on them and hopefully something will come of it. Anyone who’s reading this please share this blog and put us forward to companies that may want it.

A couple of ideas came through today on what we could make and sell, the medical side has been what people have put ideas forward for, Richard who is another manufacturer currently working in Somalia as a medic has sent through loads of ideas and the one we are going to make tomorrow morning (Don’t tell the head of design here) is from William who is or has worked in a HSSE role at the Government containment/quarantine centre were part of the role was maintaining the airlock and sanitation process between the warm and cool zone, ensuring all staff entering the cool zone sanitised their hands and any equipment they were carrying. William has come up with a fantastic idea I think that we will post pictures on the Contact Left social media as soon as we can tomorrow and hopefully it will be a winner. As we cant manufacture any more than we do now the design of this has to be very simplistic and we have to be able to teach a member of staff that would normally be doing something else so if this comes off at least we have kept someone in work, please note that right now we are not looking at letting anybody go anyway.

Thanks for reading everyone, as always share the life out of this blog, send us your ideas of how Contact Left can make it through these tough times and tomorrow I will give you day 3 of the Effects of the Coronavirus on a small business