Things moving at a rapid pace. We took a delivery from DPD today to be told by the driver that they may close in a week as all businesses are temporarily closing and there is not enough work. This is true of some of our importers/wholesalers who are closing down their warehouses due to lack of orders. Those wholesalers that have online retail businesses themselves strangely have not closed the retail side of their operations which certainly is a kick in the teeth for their retail customers who have been loyal and supportive to them. We are pleased to say that we enter this period with very high stock levels and should comfortably get through the next three weeks of lockdown. The Chancellor has today offered grants to the self employed. Most retail shop owners trade as limited companies so it looks as though the business rates concessions and grants depending on rateable values will be the only help we will get. Whilst it is generous we feel it will still lead to many more seasonal retail businesses closing shop after the Summer. Easter is a crucial trading period after the long Winter and all will be closed. It will be extremely difficult for these businesses to have turned a profit by the end of the Summer holidays and they won’t hang around and choose to go in to debt through the long Winter. Here’s a picture of one of our 2020 top sellers that we have plenty of to dispatch!
We had to make just the one essential journey to the shop today as we were expecting our ice cream suppliers to change one of the fridges. This of course was cancelled yesterday but we needed to move all the ice cream back in to our storage freezer. We really have a super ice cream supplier – if you are West Country based you may well have heard of and tasted Marshfield Ice Cream. They have been supplying and helping us for several years and won many accolades in the industry. It’s sad to see in the run up to Easter that they have halted production. They will bounce back stronger, but if you do see their products in convenience stores we recommend the salted caramel and caramel fudge with clotted cream from their organic farm.
We are hearing that India have just gone in to lockdown. One of my favourite places in the world – Mysore, the sandalwood city, will be suffering and our thoughts drift over to India. Our picture of the day – one of the new whale photo frames arriving this month.
While we continue to trade online we took the decision to temporarily close our bricks and mortar shop on Poole Quay yesterday evening. The shop has been open for 20 years now and we have probably never taken a day off from March 1st to September 30th in these 2 decades. It will mean we have more time to work on our online retail sites but this will also be an opportunity to blog a little about Dorset Gifts and let our customers in to our lives a little more – something we have never really had time to do. It’s 730am on Monday 23 March, the sun is shining, and I’m off for my last game of tennis with Spike no doubt for a while. Keep safe customers…..
