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PROFILE Premier
Get Your Orders In While You Can I recently visited Premier Decoration’s Managing Director John Athwal at his head office near London for an update on how Premier has coped with the last 12 months and his take on business moving forward into 2022. It has been one of the strangest and most challenging years we have ever experienced.” John began. “No exhibitions taking place in 2021 due to restrictions on large gatherings put huge pressure on the entire Christmas industry. Trade shows were normally the time when some orders would have been negotiated, so our showrooms became more important than ever.” Premier had the foresight to be ahead of the game and establish their showrooms much earlier than in previous years in both Northern and Southern UK locations. This offered visitors not only early access, but also created a welcoming and safe environment that customers fully appreciated and felt reassured operating within. Orders subsequently came flooding in. Luckily, Premier had been forewarned by their far eastern offices that factories would be severely underresourced in both labour terms and also in component parts. It didn’t take a genius to work out that this was going to affect the entire global supply chain. John and his team sprung into action and placed their purchase orders very early. However, the shortage of I.C. chips, that affected
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the supply of transformers for electrical items as well as other component parts, soon began to affect production. All industries relying on products and components from China were severely hit and at least one major car company had to close an entire plant due to the issue. Not only was industry hit with shortages, but every supplier from raw material providers all the way up to manufacturing was demanding up-front payments before delivery of goods. Whilst Premier was unable to invoice before delivering to their customer base, they were indeed able to keep supply moving by paying such costs in advance. The suppliers grateful to Premier for their assistance in cash flow, responded by keeping Premiers’ production lines open. Manufacturing at the beginning of 2021 was fast-paced. As the year progressed, Chinese manufacturers were continually hampered by increase upon increase in the cost of raw materials. Yet again, this problem was passed onto importers and the Premier team were able to react accordingly. The only message was that supply was more important than other factors.
The next challenge faced was the unavailability of space on vessels and the resulting mammoth price increases within the shipping industry. In some instances these costs were up to ten times higher than a year ago. Despite these price hikes there was still a constant shortage of containers. However, Premier’s resources managed to secure not only the supply of the goods, but also the containers even if some deliveries were just a little later than planned. No one was able to forecast just how badly the shipping lines slowed down on the high seas and how affected ports such as Felixstow became. Instead of accepting vessels, port authorities were forcing them to continue on to other European destinations where once unloaded, goods had to then be placed onto trucks for delivery to the U.K. So how does this affect future plans moving in to Christmas 2022? John Athwal believes that many of the same problems will still exist. Premier however are well prepared with orders already being placed from customer visits to their wonderful showrooms which have been open since December 1st 2021. This has enabled the company to place
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