Barking Mad

Pramland’s John Barker is full steam ahead on their warehouse, store expansion and trading through January into February, causing a few headaches along the way!

Ican’t start this month’s article without first telling you how happy I have been since Disney + launched the Boba Fett show, it’s really made me smile when really things have been a little grey. Ever heard the expression “blink and you’ll miss it”? You must have, and it relates perfectly to January 2022. In fact, I’m typing this mid February (much to Penny’s annoyance) and I’m sat scratching my hairless head wondering where the past seven weeks have gone.

Work has started in earnest in the store and I’m having the forecasted and to be expected issues. The work is coming along nicely and hasn’t interrupted trade so far (I say so far, it’s inevitable that it will at some point in the not too distant future). In case you’re not aware of what’s afoot let me enlighten you - we are converting the existing on site warehouse in to an extension of the store in order to house furniture and other home equipment. It’s a medium sized project that should pay dividends in the long run. As part of the alteration we are having a new and very expensive (unfortunately) heater installed in the freshly converted warehouse. It can’t be chilly when you’ve got pregnant ladies looking to spend £1500+ on a furniture set. I digress, as part of the requirements for the new heater is an upgraded gas meter, something more substantial, something that can happily supply enough gas (aka gold air these days) to the entire stores heating system.

This new meter goes by the name of a U25! Sounds like a German WW2 submarine and so far it’s proven as elusive! Considering I have zero, and I mean zero gas fitter experience, knowledge or training trying to get said meter installed by British Gas has turned in to a mammoth, time consuming task. It’s now become referred to as “John’s folly”. All the other works will be completed around the planned schedule but by time the heaters up and running we’ll be fanning ourselves and slurping on a nice cold ice cream in August. To compensate I did witness an experienced brick layer having a paddy (Hull speak for hissy fit) over being told to remove a uPVC door so the opening could be bricked up. “I don’t use a screwdriver, my tool is a trowel”. Once the foreman had sworn sufficiently at him the door was promptly (and very easily may I add) taken out and the

john@pramland.co.uk

disgruntled bricky cracked on.

I am a little annoyed with myself mind, whilst working on my cash flow last week I thought it prudent to factor in the building works and the dates for payments to be made to the firms involved. To my horror I discovered almost £7,000 I hadn’t allowed for. Rather than read what this part of the costings related to (now bare in mind part of my first job was project planning and contractor billing) I simply panicked and added a big MINUS £7,000 on my cash flow (this is where you need to insert a sad face emoji followed by a gritted teeth emoji). Oh well, I thought, my mistake just have to deal with it. Fast forward to this morning and following a discussion relating to the colour of bricks (has my life really come to this? I was destined to be on the stage thrashing like a maniac and now I’m all about the facing bricks life) I was left with no option but to direct the foreman to the section of the bill of works relating to the offending clay square things. It was at this point that I started to read what the £7,000 was relating too. Yep, you guessed – works that this building was not required to complete. Works that had been carried out successfully two weeks ago by another contractor. All that work adjusting and recalculating the cash flow was done for nothing, oh well next time I guess I should pay more attention to what I read.

So other than inevitable issues with builders and associated contractors what other things have happened in my world? Well, as I touched upon above, January happened. Having spoken to a fair few reps and some of you other stores it would appear that January was a very odd month. Many of us found the end of 2021 and the start of 2022 to be good for business. The Christmas catch up was swift and expected but then the middle of the month seemed to just drop off. Having discussed it at length with some of you, the general consensus is that Covid was the contributing factor. The general public seemed to fall in to two categories, those with Covid and therefore self-isolating at home or those that were worried about the latest strain and therefore avoiding busy places, like shops. In addition to this we, like many of you faced staffing issues due to the rules on self-isolation. At one point I had two of my team off simultaneously with Covid. It was all a bit of a nightmare to be truthful. For us the month really didn’t start to pick up, after the first two weeks until the last few days when it was like a light had been switched on. I seem to recall it was the Thursday that it all went a little crazy. Monday to Wednesday had been a little depressing, every time I Other than inevitable issues with builders and associated contractors what other things have happened in my world? Well, January happened. Having spoken to a fair few reps and some of you other stores it would appear that January was a very odd month. Many of us found the end of 2021 and the start of 2022 to be good for business.

went into the warehouse I gazed upon a massive pile of boxes, sold (but ALL with balances outstanding) and waiting for their new home.

Many of them had been sat there since before Christmas at the request of the expectant parents to be, due to the financial demands of the festive period they’d been sat there since. With new year comes the credit card bill, with its lovely big Christmas shopping balance. So, yet again the pram will have to wait.

Now, as January is about to turn in to February and baby is days away it’s finally pay day again. It’s like that season in World War Z, where the Zombies are piling over the walls of Jerusalem. A horde of parents to be amassed on the store to collect their goods, much to my relief. With it, the horde brought new parents too and the order book started to smile once again.

At the end of January, we, like so many of you reading this found January 2022 to be a successful month. Yes, it was VERY inconsistent but if we take it as a period of time the month had to be considered as a success. We’d all love to have consistency. Wouldn’t it be amazing if every day was the same? No amazing days and terrible days – just good days. It would make life so much easier to forecast cash flow and staffing needs. One day this may be the case, you’ll know when it happens as you’ll see a piggy take flight and gracefully fly past your stores window. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other.