Well, if the BBC says it….
So, the BBC reports that ‘Shoppers are warned to shop early for Christmas or miss out’. The news lands today, September 25th, which is exactly three months until Christmas day. The story feels a little bit like a sponsored post for a famous company that delivers everything from A to Z via the world’s longest river, or another one that prides itself for not being on the high street.
It urges shoppers to buy early, to not leave it until the last minute. Look, panic not, we’ll be here, available and dispatching until our last shipping day (which we haven’t yet decided – it being September and all). To be honest, we don’t normally like to talk about Christmas too soon (it ruins the magic a bit) but we do feel that the Coca-Cola Christmas truck is already fuelled up and en-route with its famous song… ‘holidays are coming, holidays are coming’ ringing in our ears. But, talking about ‘missing out’ - how are stock levels looking? Well, we’re doing our best – but yes, without wanting to sound in any way doom and gloom there has been, and continues to be, some lasting impact of products being in short supply due to COVID - either from manufacturing closing down, or demand being really high.
So, without scaremongering you into bulk buying toilet rolls or Christmas presents in September – here’s an update from us… We have orders in for more Trusco Japanese Toolboxes (the largest size will be back in stock in a couple of weeks), we’re trying really hard to get more Carhartt overall sizes (particularly womens) and aprons but it’s highly unlikely we’ll get these before Christmas and we anticipate all the stock we have going pretty quickly and not being able to replace it. We absolutely have more Niwaki coming in (although not spades for a while) but Sneeboer is the biggest issue – as they just can’t keep up with demand. So – if you had your eye on something and were going to come back later for it – it’s highly unlikely we’ll have it. You can get it elsewhere, but our next delivery is unfortunately not until after Christmas now – that’s what happens when people make great stuff well. So perhaps the BBC’s headline should instead be ‘if you’re planning to buy good stuff that’s made well and will last until next Christmas – shop early.’