FEATURE: COVID-19 FOCUS ged Sword
ups and downs of his experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic and usiness.
Another unexpected positive was delivery times from some suppliers, especially international ones. For example, some of our Belgium suppliers were turning orders around much quicker than normal and delivering in just 2-3 days, rather than the usual 5-10 days.
Unfortunately, the positives had to be met with some negatives as 80% of our UK suppliers shut overnight, making some products unavailable. Laminate flooring from UK suppliers was impossible to get hold of and we are still experiencing supply issues with this seven months later.
Whilst the residential market was booming, demand for commercial products eased dramatically in early lockdown. However, it did then pick up again as pubs and restaurants decided to use the closure period to refurbish their premises. Once restrictions were lifted, we saw a steady improvement in commercial work, and this is still above pre-lockdown levels even now.
As great as this was for our business, it certainly presented some additional challenges. The rise in orders took its toll on my team. Even something as simple as posting our samples to a customer became a challenge, as we soon ran out of packaging materials and couldn’t source them anywhere. Since March, we’ve continually had to adapt the way we’ve worked and our internal processes. We’ve carefully followed
government guidelines and advice to ensure the safety of the staff and have recently introduced ‘bubbles’ for the team. Hopefully this will help to reduce the risk to the business, should someone be taken ill with COVID-19.
We ended up only using the government’s furlough scheme for one employee who, due to childcare issues, couldn’t do her role from home. The rest of the team came back to work after the initial seven days of closure and, within the first three months of the pandemic, I took on 15 extra members of staff to help cope with the increased demand of orders. At the time of writing, I have retained six of these to continue to help with processing orders and general day-to-day duties in both the office and warehouse.
“I am so proud of all of my staff. They’ve shown great
resilience and knuckled down to help the business continue during what has been such a challenging time for us all.”
In all of this, we have still managed to rebuild our website. Whilst the guys were in the warehouse processing orders, our team was busy working from home to build our new website. We had been planning this for a long time and 2020 had to be the year so, albeit a little delayed, we finally launched in early October. The user experience is now so much more improved. We can now push forward and keep adding improvements, there is so much more to come.
This year has been full of unexpected challenges for everyone. The business world and economy has taken a bashing, yet the flooring industry has probably been one rare sector that has seen more positives than negatives. As a boss and business owner, I am so proud of all of my staff. They’ve shown great resilience and knuckled down to help the business continue during what has been such a challenging time for us all.
www.best4flooring.co.uk
twitter.com/TRetailFloors
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