EFFECTS OF THE CORONAVIRUS ON A SMALL BUSINESS - DAY 20 (05/04/2020)

Day 20 and the change is coming for us in regards to peoples spending, as a nation online spending has gone up over the last couple of weeks and even though we have not seen a massive rise we have not done too badly. The last couple of days have been less than last month, when people weren’t in lockdown yet. You would have to imagine as the weeks go on there will be less sold online as there is less money, the one thing that there is no drop in yet is fabric and materials.

What happened today is we received negative feedback with the buyer stating that he wouldn’t have bought the item if he knew it was made in China. This will lead onto a very interesting future for everyone in regards to buying habits if they want to boycott China made items, right now China seems to be the only economy doing well out of COVID-19 with emails coming every day from Chinese manufacturers offering us goods. We don’t buy direct from China (Apart from one Airsoft Brand) but lots of the UK brands that we buy from have items made in China and if there is going to be less money around then people will have no option but to buy from China, there are lots of posts going around on social media saying boycott Chinese goods but where will it be made.

The manufacturing arm of Contact Left is called UK Outdoor Manufacturing (UKOM) and everything is 100% UK Manufactured and I would like nothing more than for everybody to turn to UK Manufactured goods but the government has not supported UK manufacturing over the past however many years and although Contact Left is the most politically neutral company out there, it would be fair to say that if UK Manufacturing is going to succeed to its full potential it would help if we had as close a possible ties to Europe. In fact not only Europe the world, I can only hope that as this is a global pandemic that maybe afterwards and it’s all sorted the world may work together better all round. Nobody can argue that there are bad practices in every country and bad people but this does not make a whole nation bad exactly the same as when one person from a specific religion does something wrong it does not make the whole religion bad.

I suppose the point of the above is that today we have seen our first ever negative feedback based on the fact that an item was made in China. We have been trading since 2006 and the buyer made the comment that they wouldn’t have bought the item if they knew it was made in China. It was a £20 pair of camouflage trousers retail, were could they be made if not China? Before I get loads of comments saying Thailand, Cambodia etc etc, UK distributors are mainly set up with goods being manufactured in China and you would struggle to get a half decent pair of trousers that you can retail at this price from anywhere outside of China.

What Contact Left will take from this as a business is we will seek to acquire goods from outside China and pass this feedback to our suppliers here. For all our customers reading this a hell of a lot our goods are made in Europe, the UK and elsewhere in the world but if you are going to boycott Chinese made goods you are going to spending a lot more for even the basic goods and some goods you won’t even get at all.

Thanks for reading please share this blog and this week I will keep you updated on the 10 pallets of Hand Sanitiser that are due in on Tuesday and hopefully we can fulfill all the orders so far (Fingers Crossed) Thanks David