2020 has so far been the single weirdest year of our existence as a company. We are sure most of you will have a similar story, but in our case its has been so weird that we had to shut down for a while.
The shutdown was called right in the middle of the best period of sales we have experienced since we went online in 2009.
Things were going really well, even after we sent a newsletter saying deliveries were going to be slow and unpredictable. We also put the same message on our home page. Those two warnings about less-than-ideal service standards turned out to be the stimulus we have been looking for all along. Orders poured in, which was great until…
We realised that the predicted slowdown in our ability to deliver orders was turning into a complete stoppage. Parcels were being processed, and then getting stuck in a giant pile of similar parcels, waiting for their chance to get on their way. We felt we had no choice but to stop taking orders, so we closed the webstore.
After some weeks we learned that the international mail system was not going to be back in the shape we had come to rely on for quite a while, and decided to deliver everything by courier. That used to be our special deluxe service, available at an extra charge, and it still is fairly fast and very reliable. Only now we are not adding the extra charge. We are busy working on Plan … what? K? We went to Plan B about 20 years ago, and have worked our way through Plans C through J over the following decades.
We do have a plan, and it's a good one. Meanwhile, we are operational.
To those customers who waited ages for their products, and those few who still wait, we are very sorry for all this hassle and hope to avoid a repeat, ever.