Important update on supply and delivery delays The spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is being felt globally across supply chains affecting raw materials, textile production, CMT manufacturing and shipping networks in ways that are becoming increasingly difficult to model and assess. Due to the recent surge of COVID-19 cases in China and rolling lockdowns across major cities we are now experiencing further delays in production and shipping. Consequently, our supply chain capacity and agility has been severely impacted at a time of increasing global demand as economies begin to recover. Often hard information is lacking with real-time situations continually evolving on a weekly (sometimes daily) basis, making inventory planning challenging and ETA lead times harder to predict. As a result, we are currently working through several short and long-term challenges to minimise disruption to our customers and maintain reliable supply service wherever possible. This is an evolving situation, and we are doing all we can to mitigate this disruption. How we are responding Our planning and production teams are working tirelessly and taking several actions to improve lead-times and mitigate Covid-19 impacted supply issues, including: •
Longer view forward buying to procure inventory and raw materials on high demand or ‘at risk’ items that are currently in short supply.
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Actively procuring additional manufacturing partners to minimize production bottlenecks and slowly close the demand vs supply gap.
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Closely managing our key supply chain stakeholders on supply volumes and demand changes to influence order priority, plan production and protect against more lucrative demands from larger markets such as USA/Europe.
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Securing advance shipping container space as capacity becomes available or optioning limited airfreight (when viable) to shorten prolonged lead times.
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Improving our communications and information transparency regarding supply delays with system visibility improvements on our webstore and electronic updates.
Our commitment to you Our Fashion Biz team continues to do its utmost to safeguard our stock service commitments and to assist our customers in whatever way possible. As a stock service wholesaler, we are in a good position to be able to supply you and your customers with uniform, promotional, team and workwear solutions because of our current depth of inventory across Australia and New Zealand. However, due to unprecedented demand alongside production and shipping delays, we are currently experiencing OOS levels slightly higher than normal. We expect these OOS to improve and resolve over November and December 2021.
September 2021