How to manage stock during times of great change:Buyers have a choice of approaches to secure stock for spring despite the challenges

摘要

While our televisions have stopped showing constant scenes of lorries queuing at ports, buyers contemplating ordering stock for the spring are facing a new grim reality. Britain's exit from the EU has increased the cost of importing goods from the remaining 27 countries in the bloc, while globally there have also been some astonishingly high increases in international freight costs.Garden tool specialist Spear & Jackson, for example, says the cost of importing from the Far East quadrupled between October 2020 and January 2021. The reason is not completely clear, but it could be linked to the increase in demand and movement of products such as personal protective equipment, and that is likely to continue.