What is the supply chain shortage?
Is the supply chain disaster impacting you? It most likely is. The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact continues to spread into areas we could never have imagined. The labor shortage, congestion at ports, and raw material price increases are all results of the pandemic. One problem led to another, causing this massive trend of backorders and delays.
How did this start?
It all started with a shortage of factory workers in factories around the world that produce raw materials, components, and finished products. There are currently 10.9 million job openings in the United States alone. This along with an increase in shipping costs and a scarcity of shipping containers led to higher prices and major delays. Recently, 40 ocean cargo ships were waiting offshore daily in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Before the pandemic, it was rare to see a single ship waiting offshore. Not to mention the increase of orders from the resurgence of many businesses across the country after 2020.
What is Office360 doing?
Office360’s response to this is transparency and communication with customers. Office360 is also consistently adapting to this new environment to help serve our customers the best we can. We are working with vendors to reduce lead times and expanding our sourcing to over 50 wholesale warehouses. In order to protect against possible shortages, Office360 is making investment purchases of additional inventory. We realize that our customers are also being greatly impacted by the pandemic and we want to make sure that we are doing all we can to help. We achieve this by showing our clients the products available to us and working hard to meet their expectations and deadlines.
What can you do?
Experts don’t expect this crisis to subside until the end of 2022. So how do we manage until then? Customers are encouraged to plan ahead, way ahead. Because of the shortages, it takes longer than ever before to gather materials. It is important to be flexible with deadlines and product results. It might be impossible to achieve the specific product results requested and meet a deadline. Being aware of this shortage is a great advantage when deciding on promo products.