EFFECTS OF THE CORONAVIRUS ON A SMALL BUSINESS - DAY 10 (26/03/2020)

Would have gibbed todays blog off but if I don’t do one day I probably wouldn’t have continued and although the point of this was to drive traffic to Contact Left now it’s a way for me to keep track of what’s actually going on and hopefully give an insight to anyone that wonders what it’s like to not know whether you are actually going to be running your business with 10 or 3 people tomorrow, or if it will be running at all.

First thing is we could close right now and put everyone on furlough and hope the government hold their end of the bargain and pay 80% wages of the staff, but really how long will they pay that for? It’s not an option. Right now the supply chain across the UK is crumbling; we are getting to the point now where it will be quicker to buy essential items from China as no one in the UK is still open. Our manufacturing arm UK Outdoor Manufacturing (UKOM) are proud to make everything 100% in the UK, but the demand far outstrips capacity, the constant worry across the UK more so than ever is that we are unable now to manufacture so many items here. Every day I get emails from Chinese companies offering support to the COVID-19 crisis in the UK and offering to sell me face masks.

We currently have 6 members of staff either self-isolating, flu or on childcare duties, I am not complaining they are off as its all for valid reasons but I was worried 10 days ago about firing staff and how to reroll them, now Contact Left only has a 50% workforce with only a small drop in orders and plenty of work to do. In reality if we are going to provide a service to the military guys and gals that buy from us and complete the Police purchase orders we need to keep the retail side going from a mail order point of view. But we do need to be more efficient and the weird thing about all of this is when we come out at the other side, we will be a stronger more productive company.

On a positive note we got 3000 bottles of 50ml hand sanitizer in today and a few of the 250ml so those of you that have ordered these sizes, its been dispatched. I had over ordered this because this was my opportunity to sell a load on EBAY at £20 a bottle and go into hibernation with Disney+, but I made the fatal error of offering it to the Police, they bought 2000 straight away at £1.85 and I sold 420 bottles to the local minimart round the corner, previously they were both paying over £3 a bottle. We still have a few left in both 250ml and 50ml on the website but I am leaving the 3 week turnaround on there so if there is a mad rush people will understand.

We are struggling with processing some trade requests still, but with us panic buying everything from water jerry cans to fabrics this week it’s been really hectic. We have had to disable so many products a lot of time has been taken up stopping us being productive. I know we are still to quote 1 Police Force on shooters belts (If your reading this it will be done tomorrow) and another I have sent the wrong inner belt sample to, again I will sort this. But now is the time that we will really start to need everyone’s help, come next week we expect the sales to have fallen dramatically so if you know someone with a shop or a business tell them to get in touch to buy our super strength hand sanitizer. Those of you that havnt got face masks check out the reusable pocket ones on our website.

Thanks for reading, stay safe, social distance, share the life out of this