When Victorians finally got out of lockdown, we thought the worst was behind us! However, 2020 being as unpredictable as ever, has continued to serve us new challenges. The most critical this holiday period has been stock…or lack of thereof.
Here are some FAQs that will hopefully provide some clarity to the situation.
Q: Why have so many styles, colours and sizes gone out of stock?
A: In any normal year it was uncommon to see more than a handful of styles go out of stock at any given time. This year, however, we’ve seen products go in and out of stock daily. There a few factors involved:
COVID-19 has impacted global supply across the industry. The cost and availability of raw materials like cotton have been significantly affected.
Logistics and transport to Australia, primarily sea container transportation greatly reduced and cost significantly increased.
A massive change in consumer behaviour has led to unprecedented growth in eCommerce, especially print-on-demand and customised merch. The unpredictable growth has been global, especially so in big markets like the USA, Europe and Australia!
Our preferred supplier, AS Colour, are moving to a new warehouse in January 2021. As a result, many styles, both new and existing, have not been able to be replenished.
So we end up in a classic situation of high demand, and low supply. Exacerbating the issue is the big-name suppliers in USA and Europe taking up a lot of the available stock.
Q: Why have out-of-stock products been available for purchase by my customers?
A: Parts of the inventory and stock control are done manually, and as a result, we have experienced a lag in determining when a product is out of stock. The high number of orders means we’ve experienced delays in picking and registering a particular product is out of stock. Along side with some issues on Shopify’s side of requesting stock numbers to update your side, it’s not been ideal.
In regular periods, plentiful stock would usually be on hand from AS Colour and we could replenish stock by the following business day. But due to the aforementioned supply & demand challenges, we have often not been informed a product is out of stock until a few days later.
OGO understands this causes immense disappointment and inconvenience for sellers and customers. We had not predicted a situation where so many products would go out of stock suddenly, sometimes with no warning.
No excuses here, just reasons. We need to do better, and we will!
We’re genuinely sorry!
Q: What is being done to address Out of Stock issues?
A:
Our new deeply integrated inventory system will be online soon - with this, we have sophisticated algorithms to help predict when an outage is going to occur (hopefully ahead of time!) as well as better demand predictions to enable us to try get the stock before you need it!
A new full-time inventory manager (hi Tom!) is now managing our inventory and stock control. Whilst it hasn’t eliminated the issue where an out-of-stock product is available for purchase, it has dramatically reduced the time it takes to register and synchronize inventory with all OGO products. We’ve also seen a reduction in the time taken to inform sellers when products are out-of-stock.
From January 8th, 2021, AS Colour will begin operating from their new, larger warehouse in Melbourne! Expect to see even more stock on hand, new styles (including the new Crew Neck Sweatshirt) and new colours!
Expect many popular styles/colours and sizes to come back into stock in the weeks starting from January 8th. OGO will be one of the first in line to get these styles.
