We are stuck in supply chain hell
I get asked at the store, often these days, about why a certain product is not on the shelf. There are many answers to that question, of course, ranging from “just sold the last one yesterday” to “we no longer carry that item.”. But the overwhelming correct answer is “It’s on order, but my vendor is out of stock.”
It’s crazy. Just last week I received some items from a vendor that I had ordered in September. SEPTEMBER! And it was only a few items from that PO. Let me explain what is going on.
First - the shipping logistics process is broken due to COVID. And we are not just talking about China shipments. The vendor I mentioned above manufactures their product in France. It still needs to go on a ship to get to the US. The bottlenecks have a number of variables:
There are a limited number of ships and there is a backlog in getting space on a ship in a predictable manner. This is the proverbial pouring 10 pounds of manure into a 5 pound sack problem.
Even if you can get some space on a ship there is a shortage of containers. Everything is containerized now. No container - no ship.
Assuming you filled a container and got it onto a ship, that ship needs to dock in a port and be offloaded and put on a truck for delivery to the warehouse. The ports are backed up due to longshoreman work restrictions due to COVID. The port of LA is in a particularly spectacular mess. I have one vendor who had a container on a ship…in port…and it still took over 3 weeks to get that container off the ship and into his warehouse.
So, if you have product ready to ship and distribute from overseas it is next to impossible to get those products actually shipped. But that is not the only constraint.
The second big bottleneck is in the production factories themselves. These factories are built and designed to run 2-3 shifts a day. But, because of safety precautions they may be only able to run for one or two shifts. I just got a notice from a knife manufacturer located in Germany who said they can not run their second shift at all because, after the first shift they have to do a complete cleaning of the factory. This cleaning takes the place of a second shift of production.
So, in essence, we have product production limited by 1/2-2/3 of manufacturing capacity for safety reasons - and then, what is produced can take months to get from the factory to the distribution warehouse here in the US. This makes it a total crap shoot for a small store like ours to predictably stock our shelves. It is not because we are not ordering product - it is because our vendors can not fulfill our orders.
We appreciate the patience of our customers as we all work around the impact of COVID. I hope this post gives you a small insight into the global challenges that we all are facing.