It’s been over a year since we started feeling the worst effects brought on by Covid-19 and the damage it brought with it to virtually every corner of every market. Causing so many businesses to shut down or dial back performance as they abided by the regulations and must-haves in order to try and fight back against the virus as it continued to spread. The domino-effect that it had on everything else can be still felt to this very day.
Limited work-forces and operating conditions have delayed shipments and freight going both to and from just about every major company out there. This has an effect on everything from manufacturers to retail outlets. Causing shortages of supplies, which causes fulfillment issues with high-demand products like smartphones, video cards, and gaming consoles. Then you have longer wait times for the shipping of goods to consumers, even coming from the largest names, like Amazon. The latter of which being something that has finally started to level back off (for the most part).
Even with a year passing by, this still has become a massive endeavor to try to return all of these gears to the success they once were performing with. Companies like UPS have been working hard at trying to reduce the strain across the map. But they can only do so much as there are still many factors out of their control.
This can be clearly seen by ordering anything that heavily depends on inter-continental shipping to manufacturer, build, and deliver to the consumer.
For example, someone we know ordered a pair of popular KRK studio monitor speakers from B&H around April of last year (2020). This happened to be one of the worst-case scenarios where clearly both KRK and B&H have been running into major trials to make things happen. The speakers appear to have finally reached the moment of preparing to ship as that person said they were recently charged for them (hinting at the fact that they might have finally received something in stock they can send out). This led to a few jokes circling around referring to B&H having a “guaranteed shipped within a year” policy. Although it isn’t B&H’s fault as they are a fantastic company with a strong reputation and have been around for quite a while.
Many other retailers have faced orders that have had to be canceled entirely as they gave up waiting for stock to arrive. Simply because manufacturers either don’t have the crews or conditions to get products out quick enough (or at all) or are stuck waiting for the parts required to build these products from other manufacturers facing the same issues. Considering the unique situations where materials are having to be shipped to a different company where a company then manufactures parts for the main product, who then ships the parts to another company to have it assembled (and hopefully that will be the same country of final sale)–you can imagine the overall effect being felt by everyone involved.
Thankfully, as vaccines continue to be administered and once infection rates collapse, things will slowly return to normal. Although not every one of these companies will still be around when that time occurs, it is all downhill from here.
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