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nursery matters JOHN BARKER
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Pramland’s John Barker is taking a look this month at the three P’s - Pandemic, Pingdemic, Price Increases and how these words are currently having an impact on everyone.
W
e’ve had lots of new lingo to learn over the past 18 months and the most recent addition to our everyday language is having some what of an annoying affect on many of us. I am referring to “Pingdemic”. . . .not heard of it? (Where have you been?) It’s a word that sums up the ongoing issue of huge swathes of the population being forced to self isolate as they came in to contact with someone that has symptoms of Covid-19. I say came in to contact, in reality the NHS’s track and trace system is pinging people that drove past each other whist out for a Sunday afternoon drive. We’ve seen the affects of so many people having to self isolate as the store has been quieter. We’ve also re-instated all our COVID-19 policies as I am concerned about the affects of one of our team having to self isolate could have on our ability to operate. As many of our customers have young children already our appointments and collections have been hit by many of them having to cancel as they have a child isolating from school. The affects of having so many people self isolate has meant we are approximately 15-20% down on the weeks since we reopened. We know this issue will resolve itself as
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nursery today
these customers will eventual emerge from self isolation and head back to our store, the only issue is that when they visit they’ll be even closer to their due date and given the ongoing global shipping crisis this will result in further headaches for us all, more on that later. The other side of the current self isolation guidelines is that many of our stores are at constant risk of temporary closure due to lack of staff. We have a small team of myself and seven part time team members, we all operate on a rota and tend to work with different people most days. Should one of us develop symptoms, or get pinged to self isolate this will affect all the other members of the team that have worked with them within the past 24 hours. We are therefore at huge risk of a store closure. A store closure that would represent a huge financial loss to the business. A closure that would mean we are unable to receive or deliver goods to expectant parents. The logistics of a forced closure are a nightmare and do not bare thinking about, even though
As many of our customers have young children already our appointments and collections have been hit by many of them having to cancel as they have a child isolating from school. The affects of having so many people self isolate has meant we are approximately 15-20% down on the weeks since we reopened.
john@pramland.co.uk
