Back to school - Expecting a return to normality
Published: 3rd Jan 2022
Last Wednesday I emailed 5 school shoe suppliers, a school shoe wholesaler, and a chain and an independent retailer which specialise in school shoes to ask what they expect of back-to-school business this year.
Sensibly, 7 of the 8 had switched off their emails for the holidays, and only 1 replied. Thank you, Stephen Burrow of Softer, who wrote:
- We are expecting a far more normal Back to School than last year.
- We do not anticipate a late start and things should be as normal as they can be.
- It seems the current strain of Covid is far less severe and has had virtually no negative impact on society when compared to previous strains.
- We even anticipate that school sports will return to normal, and include spectators.
In terms of Supply Chain, we have not felt any negative impact at this stage, we were fortunate to have secured all our raw materials early on, and we are also fortunate that most of our inputs are locally sourced and manufactured. It also would appear that as things “normalise” globally, so will supply chains as well.
Let's hope for the best year of the last three and that things show signs of reverting to normal.
