You'll probably have heard about shortages of various goods over the last few months. This is across almost every industry that imports manufactured goods, from sporting equipment to toys. It's affecting semiconductor availability which is causing delays to iPhone shipments! There have even been shortages of pallets within some parts of Australia! It almost seems like a joke, but the pallet shortage could have serious consequences for Australian supply chains, especially supermarkets. It's been dubbed 'pallet-gate' by the Australian Financial Review.
So, what about Speed Queen?
We have literally acres of warehouse space stacked 4 high with commercial laundry stock.
The root cause is of course COVID. But COVID had two impacts – one was production facilities shutting down or reducing output because everyone expected demand to weaken. The other significant factor is shipping. Not only have shipping costs skyrocketed, but availability has become much more difficult. Even when factories have produced items, getting them to the end customer has been problematic. Because COVID has affected both shipping and manufacturing all imported products are likely to face price hikes and shortages, doubly so for products involving high amounts of manufacturing - from consumer electronics to commercial tools.
Australian distributors of Speed Queen commercial laundry equipment made sure they ordered early and confidently, securing shipping well in advance. This means we have plenty of stock for almost all of our products right now, in Australia. The good news (or bad, depending on how you look at things) is that this stock is cheaper than it will be next year. That won’t be unique to commercial laundry equipment – component prices have increased, so most prices of manufactured goods are likely to increase.
So the smart money buys now. This isn’t a sales tactic – think of it more as a “we told you so” (not that we would ever say that)!!