While this past year has brought on a lot of changes to our world, there is no doubt that our businesses and markets will never be the same after going through the year 2020. We have seen great advancements in the medical field, social change, political war, stock market volatility, and so much more that has happened. It’s hard to imagine what this year would have been like without the added stressor of COVID 19. One thing I know for sure is that my business definitely became worried about being able to stay open during the pandemic. The company I manage creates different fabric and textile pieces for luxury cars and big brands in that industry. Whether it be Ford, Lincoln, Chevy, Lexus, Mercedes – you name it. We have probably designed something for them in the past or the present. However, we were worried that, since we all know demand for new cars has steadily declined over the past year, that we would soon be starving for some sort of business opportunity. Well, we ended up finding one.
The biggest success our company had in years came in the form of PPE. Being a fabric and textile company, we already had much of the machinery we needed to start manufacturing face masks for the general public. We were given grants from the government and even the CDC to begin making adjustments to our factories and supply chains in order to start creating masks in mass quantities very quickly. When the pandemic first started and masks were becoming mandatory for all people in public settings, there was a huge shortage of them to be found in stores. Since everyone needed them on such little notice, there was a gaping whole in the market that businesses and government bodies were scrambling to fill. Thankfully, we were one of the lucky ones that got to fill that space.
One of the problems we ran into was shipping our product in an efficient way. We were very used to our structured routine of orders and had been using the same processes and methods for years. However, we started to work through different problems and issues as they hit us. We had to greatly increase our purchasing of shipping supplies, and this became a slight problem when the packaging and supply company could not keep up with our orders. We needed shipping supplies badly to get our masks to different department stores all over the country, and we were having trouble finding the means of doing that. We ended up ordering from a bunch of different supplies all at once, hoping to scrape up enough boxes each week to have orders ready on time. This method proved to be effective for a while, until our main supplies was able to get back caught up on orders as things became less crazy.
What I have taken away from this experience is that life is crazy. Life continues to surprise me; even when I think that things are going to go a certain way, there is always a curveball being thrown my direction that I simply do not see coming. I know that me and my coworkers did good work this year in manufacturing PPE to help fight the pandemic, but I think it is time we get back to doing what we normally do.
Boxed Up! 