Make hay while the sun shines….

Predicting the future has always been a bit hit and miss, predicting the future in 2020 has been downright impossible.

Back in January, the astute may have picked up the odd article deep in the papers about a mysterious flu-like disease in some Chinese town few in the UK were aware of.  No one could have predicted that within months Boris Johnson, a well-known for his libertarian values, would be advising the country to join the rest of the world into lockdown and that it would respond quite so completely with this advice.

Demanding times, for sure, so how did our customers respond? The first reaction was the preverbal ‘oh bother’ and delay, delay, our warehouses are packed we’re doomed. Then the government announces, what is for most, a generous furlough scheme, things aren’t looking so bad for a lot of households, our order books start to refill.

Daily the media is reminding us how hard life is, how hard it is for business etc et, so why are we seeing such a surge in orders?  Possibly what COVID era has done is fast forward what was already happening on the web and the high street. Fleet of foot companies with a decent online presence with the right products, in stock, and the ability to get them to the customer in a reasonable time (under a week) have done well, and those that haven’t these 4 key areas sorted are having quite a hard time. Seemingly it’s the same for every trade from decorators’ merchants to cycle shops.

Now, with people bored at home with money burning holes, the pressure is on to supply more and fast – very fast, because there’s no such thing as a ‘free lunch’, we’ll shortly awake from this Covid nightmare with a stupendous economic hangover.