Coronavirus - What it Means for Widdop & Our Customers

A note from Product Development Director, Stephen Illingworth.

"We have been working for the last few years on improving our spring stock position and so I’m pleased to report that our current stock levels going in to the new season is the healthiest it has ever been on new and existing lines.

However, just over 300 of our 2,000 new Spring lines have, as per original stock planning, not shipped yet. We have also had a fantastic January and Spring fair with an increase in sales of over 25%, therefore there is set to be an inevitable impact from the Coronavirus situation.

Along with delays to those 300+ new lines, there are many new and existing lines selling at a greater volume than we expected. As such, if something exceeds our sales expectations due to unpredictable popularity, we cannot currently tell you how long it will be until it is next in stock.

Therefore, any stock you feel that you will need throughout the Spring season that you see is available, should be ordered immediately to guarantee your requirements. You can also contact any of our sales staff who have full access to stock information that is being updated daily line by line.

We are placing orders for Christmas and Autumn lines now to help our factories plan and advance our production but, as I am sure you can imagine, this is a constantly changing and difficult situation for them to manage.

At time of writing, less than 50% of the factories we work with are back at work, which is already 3-4 weeks late and some of our top 10 factories only have 10% of their workers back and are also currently unable to ship due to transport problems. This means we will experience delays with shipments which at this stage, we estimate, could be as long as 2-3 months.

We are pushing for updates every day but information is limited at the moment. We hope to be able to give a much more detailed prediction of the extent of the impact from the week commencing 9 ^th March. Please be reassured that we are in a good place to handle this issue compared to most suppliers in our trade and we will update you as soon as there is anything of significance to report.

Thanks and best wishes,

Stephen Illingworth"