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As a result, some of our products are taking significantly longer than usual to come into stock at the moment. While we, of course, want you to get your furniture as fast as possible, we (like many other retailers) are currently facing international shipping challenges which are out of our control. This, in turn, has led to substantial delays worldwide.
When it became apparent last March that Coronavirus was making its way around the world and many countries began to go into lockdown, retailers anticipated a drop in consumer demand and slowed their operations accordingly. However, once the situation settled and we started to see a rising increase in orders, supply chains became overwhelmed. International trade volumes began to skyrocket, which meant a huge demand for cargo shipments. This quickly led to a container shortage, as well as capacity problems due to reduced workforces.
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The dormant period brought on by lockdowns across the globe left thousands of containers sitting in American and European ports, where they shouldn’t have been. This led to a very difficult situation, as containers needed to be returned to Asia amid the chaos before shipments could resume. Fast forward to today, and our suppliers still have no choice but to wait for empty containers to become available, which unfortunately means your furniture has nowhere to go in the meantime.
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We’ve now tripled the amount of stock we’re holding on to compared to last year, so we can ensure that we’ve got plenty of quick-delivery furniture ready and waiting to go to our customers. We aim to deliver these in-stock items within 2 weeks, but there are some out-of-area postcodes which may take us a little longer to reach.
The Steps We're Taking to Tackle Delivery Delays
Words by Emma Hughes
September 21, 2021
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3m
Whilst at Barker and Stonehouse much of our furniture is sourced within the UK – particularly upholstery and beds – we do rely on manufacturers from both Europe and the wider world. Our UK suppliers also depend upon certain components which come from overseas, but unfortunately a number of unexpected situations have caused major disruptions to the global supply chain over the last year.
As a result, some of our products are taking significantly longer than usual to come into stock at the moment. While we, of course, want you to get your furniture as fast as possible, we (like many other retailers) are currently facing international shipping challenges which are out of our control. This, in turn, has led to substantial delays worldwide.
But we aren’t just waiting for it to pass. As a company, we’ve had to be extremely responsive, changing the way that we operate in order to find solutions. We want to assure you that we are doing everything we possibly can to reduce the impact on our valued customers, so we have taken some time to explain the problems that we are working against, and what we are doing to tackle them.
COVID-19
When it became apparent last March that Coronavirus was making its way around the world and many countries began to go into lockdown, retailers anticipated a drop in consumer demand and slowed their operations accordingly. However, once the situation settled and we started to see a rising increase in orders, supply chains became overwhelmed. International trade volumes began to skyrocket, which meant a huge demand for cargo shipments. This quickly led to a container shortage, as well as capacity problems due to reduced workforces.
One of the most recent challenges we’ve encountered has been that of the Yantian port closure, due to local Covid-19 outbreaks. Located in southern China, Yantian is one of the largest and busiest ports in the world, which means we could now be looking at additional weeks or months to clear the backlog of cargo that has built up during the port’s partial closures in June. Source: https://bit.ly/3yelnmi
CONTAINER CRISIS
According to DW News, “demand for shipping containers far exceeds supply at the moment” as there simply aren't enough available. This is not an issue that can be easily resolved either, as “there are only two companies in the world that build and sell shipping containers - both of which are based in China”. Source: https://bit.ly/3BSoaDC
The dormant period brought on by lockdowns across the globe left thousands of containers sitting in American and European ports, where they shouldn’t have been. This led to a very difficult situation, as containers needed to be returned to Asia amid the chaos before shipments could resume. Fast forward to today, and our suppliers still have no choice but to wait for empty containers to become available, which unfortunately means your furniture has nowhere to go in the meantime.
As a result of this shortage, container shipping rates have increased to record levels, and those who do not meet the costs are simply losing their place – despite having existing contracts.
Recent weeks have seen fees for empty freight containers skyrocket by as much as 300 to 400 percent. Antoine Bouin of logistics and supply chain, DB Schenker, explains “Empty container shortages are worsened by port congestion in Europe and the US, and recently, by China’s Yantian port backlog. Port congestion, berthing delays, flow imbalances and the slow return of empty containers have caused shipping lines to skip some of their regular trips and pushed global shipping reliability to an historic low.” Source: https://bit.ly/3rDeMzb
BREXIT
Putting even more strain on the system back in December 2020 was the sudden rush to get goods into Britain before Brexit. Huge 10-mile lorry queues were seen at Calais, causing delays of up to five hours. As you can imagine, this made it even more difficult for regular shipments to make their way to retailers like us. Source: https://bit.ly/3iWPTun
SUEZ CANAL
Moving on to March 2021, headlines were dominated by the blockage of the Suez Canal, which “created a traffic jam of hundreds of ships, making matters worse because it played havoc with schedules and exacerbated congestion at ports.” As the Suez canal is one of the world’s major shipping routes, this blockage held up a large number of cargo deliveries, which led to even more bottlenecks once normal service resumed. Source: https://bbc.in/3yekZUH
HOW WE’RE ADAPTING
While the delivery times on a number of our products are longer than usual, please be aware that we are working tirelessly to manage the situation. We maintain long-standing relationships with many of our suppliers, so we trust them to help us out as much as they can - but we're also taking the following steps to tackle these delays...
Extending lead times and increasing communication
We are consciously extending our delivery estimates to avoid disappointment. Further unavoidable delays could still occur, but we are in touch with our suppliers daily to ensure that we have as much information as possible. We’ll continue to inform customers of any updates as we receive them, and endeavour to keep our estimates as realistic as possible.
Being more strategic with our shipments
In order to meet demand, we’re now being more selective about the products we're choosing to bring in, while fitting as many customer orders into each of our containers as is safe to do so.
Planning ahead and paying more
We’re organising our shipments well ahead of time to leave room for any extra delays, and we're paying higher fees for our containers so that we can get your orders into the UK as quickly as possible.
Tripling the amount of stock in our warehouses
We’ve now tripled the amount of stock we’re holding on to compared to last year, so we can ensure that we’ve got plenty of quick-delivery furniture ready and waiting to go to our customers. We aim to deliver these in-stock items within 2 weeks, but there are some out-of-area postcodes which may take us a little longer to reach.
Looking ahead, we’re planning to further increase our capacity – not only to put us in a better position to combat any future challenges, but also to allow us to get a wider range of furniture to our customers fast.
As always, we thank you for your support and patience.
Barker and Stonehouse
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