How COVID-19 is impacting our operations

June 10, 2020
We are open and oh boy, has it been busy!

First lets start by saying we hope you are well and safe and appreciate your patience during this frightening, uncertain time.

Second, we want you to know that we remain committed to the safety of our team, our families, our customers and our entire community. As we do our best to make sense of government orders and see where we fit in, we are having to make our own best determination of what to do. At the moment, we are open, however we are continuously monitoring the CDC and state and local government sources for instructions and information. This could be far from over and we realize that.

As of June 10th, none of our workers or their families have shown symptoms of being infected with COVID-19 and we are taking steps to ensure it stays that way. A policy of staying home when ill has long been the policy even before Coronavirus and that continues to be strictly enforced. We are also practicing social distancing.

As of June 10th, none of our workers have been let go. A lot of that has to do with the seasonal nature of the business and being in a strong position to weather slow periods. Our reopening includes an optional attendance policy if a worker does not feel safe coming in should there be an increase in COVID-19 cases in the community.

At first, it was a backlog of orders from the shelter-in-place closure. Then every school in the county from K-12 was ordering graduation signs for students. Then a busy political season was gearing up. If that wasn't enough reason to have us working around the clock, 7 days a week to catch up, the George Floyd protests added even more demand for our products.

Our supply chain remains disrupted and as expected, we are having to really scavenge for some supplies that we need to produce orders. Thankfully, we had a good inventory level going into this however we are having to conserve and in many cases that is requiring rationing supplies and placing limits on order quantities. Not all items are available right now. We will do our best to accommodate your order however if we can’t due to materials that are unavailable, we will let you know.

Those of you who are familiar with the behind-the-scenes production know that we are a consumer of the same type of the personal protective equipment (PPE) that is used in the medical and healthcare industry. Thankfully we had a decent stock of single use and reusable PPE before the start of the crisis, but we are having to conserve it is best that we can. Suppliers of this equipment don’t have any available at the moment and aren’t sure when it will be available. We also don’t want to compete against frontline healthcare workers for PPE that we use for far less important purposes. This may at some point impact our ability to output certain items that involve working with chemicals if we are unable to resupply with PPE after several months.

As the backlog is currently several days or more, we have also temporarily suspended our same day turnaround and delivery guarantees. This doesn’t mean you won’t get your order when promised or the next day, it just means we are unable to guarantee that at the moment. During this crisis, we are doing our best to fill orders, possibly with reduced staff, with a shortage of supplies and a backlog of orders (for which we are ever grateful for). Orders are available for delivery only and not for customer pickup.

Again, thank you for your business, patience and understanding. If you have any questions about availablilty or anything else, please don’t hesitate to contact us. 1-800-669-2298