Regular readers here know that I own a small business that is in the trade of HVAC wholesale distribution, which is a subset of industrial distribution. Today I came out with a statement to the employees and I am interested in what the readers here think about it. If you are interested, please see below the fold and thanks in advance for any comments, good or bad. Some parts redacted or altered to preserve privacy.
COVID-19
Sh*t Just Got Real
I had been half-expecting that San Antonio would cancel or delay the yearly Fiesta; this was made official Friday morning: put off the celebrations until November. Fiesta San Antonio was originally focused on Sam Houston’s victory at San Jacinto – which took place in April of 1836. (Lot of other events being cancelled as well.) Since Wednesday, I had been getting emails from various companies who I do business with, at least enough business for them to have my email: Costco, Sam’s, Petco, Frost Bank, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, the Texas author’s group (who have put off the Wimberly book event from June until November)the senior center in Bulverde who hosts a fall craft fair, Lowe’s and Home Depot – I think. All had pretty much the same message: “Aware of the Covid-19 thing, taking every precaution – deep-cleaning, sanitizing, encouraging sick employees to stay home, those who can to work remotely, concern but doing what we can, customers encouraged to wash hands, self-quarantine if feeling ill …” I wonder now if there wasn’t a degree of coordination going on, or if all the corporate public relations departments simultaneously came to the same conclusion. Reasoning? I rather thought the city and the Fiesta Commission would have to do something of the sort, after reading of Disneyland closing, and the LDS temporarily suspending meetings at every level.
Crisis Remote Working: What Will be the Long-Term Effects?
A lot of people…office workers, students…are going to be getting their first experience of remote working, and a lot of organizations are going to be getting either their first experience or a greatly expanded experience in managing this kind of work. What will be the long-term effects of this?…will people eagerly return to their brick-and-mortar working environment as soon as it is safely possible?
Certainly, there are a lot of workers who would welcome the opportunity to avoid their daily commutes. And there are a lot of employers who would be happy to save a lot of money on office space.
And there are surely some parents who would welcome the opportunity to keep their kids at home…there are also more than a few who have arranged their lives and their work schedules around the assumption that their kids will be in school for several hours every weekday.
Many of the remote working experiences are surely going to be suboptimal, however, given that there has been little if any leadtime to prepare systems, content, and procedures.
So what do you think?..a return to things the way they were, or permanent change?
SARS-CoV2/COVID-10 Update 3-5-2020 — “As long as you remember to keep breathing and don’t fall asleep, it’s basically just like the flu.”
Issues covered will be on COVID-19 spread, World Headlines, the 3-4-2020 Seattle Public Health Press conference, World Headlind Summary, Corruption at the WHO, Bad and good news COVID-19 medical developments. the Political/Demographic Implications of COVID-19 for the Gov’t Elites, and the social media and videos COVID-19 tracking source section.
Top line, There are currently 97,138 confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide, including 3,351 fatalities as of the March 5, 2020, at he 4:48pm ET time hack on the BNO News corona virus tracking site (https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/02/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/) There are 80(+) and growing umber of nations including China plus three “Chinese special administrative regions” (Macao, Hong Kong and Taiwan) that have reported COVID-19 infections. China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, Italy, Iran, Germany, R.O.K. and the USA all appear to have local, or endemic, spread of the disease. Russia, Egypt, and Columbia appear to have joined the endemic spread list as well due to airports in the UAE and elsewhere picking up air travelers originating from those nations as sick with COVID-19.
WORLD HEADLINE SUMMARY (3/5/2020)
o New Jersey confirms first presumptive case
o NY state cases double to 22
o Seattle closes 26 schools
o Pentagon tracking 12 possible COVID-19 cases
o Illinois reports 5 more cases
o NYC reports 2 more cases, raising total to 4
o Italy postpones referendum vote; death toll hits 148
o WHO’s Tedros: “Now’s the time to pull out the stops”
o Tennessee confirms case
o Nevada confirms first case
o New Delhi closes primary schools
o EU officials weigh pushing retired health-care workers back into service to combat virus
o Italy to ask EU for permission to raise budget deficit as lawmakers approve €7.5 billion euros
o Beijing tells residents not to share food
o 30-year-old Chinese man dies in Wuhan 5 days after hospital discharge
o Cali authorities tell ‘Grand Princess’ cruise ship not to return to port until everyone is tested
o Global case total passes 95k
o Lebanon sees cases double to 31
o France deaths climb to 7, cases up 138 to 423
o EY sends 1,500 Madrid employees home after staffer catches virus
o Trump says he has a “hunch” true virus mortality rate is closer to 1%
o Switzerland reports 1st death
o South Africa confirms 1st case
o UK chief medical officer confirms ‘human-to-human’ infections are happening in UK
o UK case total hits 115
o Google, Apple, Netflix cancel events
o HSBC sends research department and part of London trading floor home
o Facebook contract infected in Seattle
o Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Netflix cancel events and/or ask employees to work from home
o Netherlands cases double to 82
o Spain cases climb 40, 1 new death
o Belgium reports 27 new cases bringing total to 50
o Germany adds 87 cases bringing total to 349
Co-Vid -19 and Supply Chain
As I mentioned on these pages a few days ago, I am attending a national conference in DC for my company and around 300 of our vendors. As a reminder, I am involved in industrial distribution (actually HVAC distribution, which is a subset of industrial distribution).
I asked the same question of dozens of my top vendors, and it was basically “what issues are you seeing with regards to the production slowdowns in China?”. I left the question open intentionally as I didn’t want to funnel responses.
Almost all of them, as if they rehearsed their responses together, said the following:
We have enough safety stock to get us through the Spring orders and a few months afterward.
We are in constant contact with our Chinese vendors (as if this means anything) and are looking at alternate sources (prices will increase).
There may be shortages on certain items in the future.
I distilled these responses down a bit and thought about it and I think that there will be some supply chain issues, and there may be some opportunities. One vendor remarked that once Chinese production is fully back on line that there is a container logjam anticipated that might put some orders back several months. The vendors could be giving us the “remain calm” routine to try to keep runs on product to a minimum, but the demand in HVAC just isn’t there right now, as we are firmly in “shoulder” season. Shoulder season is Spring and Fall, where there aren’t too many emergencies, unless you live in the commercial world, where everything is an emergency.
Not much more outside of these comments was related to me and I think they are for the most part telling the truth. I guess we will know in a few months. If we start out Spring with some hot weather like in 2018, we could start to see some relationships tested.