For anyone who is chasing garments of every type and style, we understand your pain. The supply chain issue is applicable to everything from ramen noodles in the grocery store to automobiles. It is not just the finished products, but the raw materials and the sub-assembly items.
So what to do?
Get creative, that's what. We have had conversations with customers who tell us that they have called 7 vendors to fill one order. Or that they have converted brands to fill the order and told the customer that the original brand was unavailable. Or they have had to start from scratch with the sale to find items that would fit both the customer and the supply chain issues.
Well folks, it isn't just shirts. Anyone who needs a new car will know of the shortage of electronics that has stopped car production. Or chat with someone in the foam industry and they are out of the base chemical to produce styrene box inserts. Or try to find copper wire to install new power drops into a facility. The list is long and diverse.
In our world, we struggle with it all. Electronics to wire to small basic switches. The largest eye opener is DC motors. The screen printing industry, as a US whole, uses the same couple of motors on all conveyor ovens. It has been this way for over 30 years, so all of the ovens in the field also use these motors. Guess what. They are not available. So we have had to get creative. We have sent customers to motor repair shops. We have offered used motors at a drastic discount. We have upsized motors and sent additional mounting brackets to make them fit. We have found alternates that need new brackets but will work. Anything to keep our customer's production running.
Just like you, we are going to great lengths to keep our customer's machines running.
Changes coming?
China, who is is one of the US largest trading partners, continues to shut down full sectors of their country. While this continues the world will see additional shortages depending of what items are produced in those sectors.
We want our customers to be aware that supply chain issues run deep but that the Brown team is working diligently to keep your shop operating at the top level.
