If some of your income comes from gift shops, retail or online sales, can you keep your operations running while social distancing measures are in place? Natasha Troitino examines the challenges.
Having relaunched our online shop in 2015, growth has been steady but building income has been a challenge due to many factors, including resourcing, logistics, carriage costs and marketing abilities. But I am sure I will not have been alone in it springing to the forefront of my mind when the prospect of a lockdown and closure of our properties was looking likely due to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, like many others in the sector and on the High Street, we were not in the position where we could effectively maintain social distancing in our warehouse and so therefore could not keep the online shop open.
A workaround to one of our logistical issues a few years ago was to work with key suppliers to supply direct to the customer, eliminating the need for us to hold excessive amounts of stock. This has allowed us to continue to trade online... Keep reading on Cultural Enterprises
Having relaunched our online shop in 2015, growth has been steady but building income has been a challenge due to many factors, including resourcing, logistics, carriage costs and marketing abilities. But I am sure I will not have been alone in it springing to the forefront of my mind when the prospect of a lockdown and closure of our properties was looking likely due to the unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, like many others in the sector and on the High Street, we were not in the position where we could effectively maintain social distancing in our warehouse and so therefore could not keep the online shop open.
A workaround to one of our logistical issues a few years ago was to work with key suppliers to supply direct to the customer, eliminating the need for us to hold excessive amounts of stock. This has allowed us to continue to trade online... Keep reading on Cultural Enterprises