A recent article by the Professional Clothing Industry Association Worldwide PCIAW® CEO, Yvette Ashby, has highlighted the trials of purchasing PPE during this C19 pandemic and the pitfalls many companies are falling into. She has reported that many businesses are “buying blind” with unknown suppliers or suppliers who are not fully vetted which is resulting in huge losses of maybe up to six figures sums. The Cabinet Office relies on reports from Plimsoll and guidance from the PCIAW®, but in the desperate rush to find PPE this was not always the case. Yvette explains:
“All of the losses were preventable if the Plimsoll rating had been checked – it takes seconds. We are desperately trying to protect buyers from losing hundreds of thousands of pounds on PPE from dubious suppliers, who are not expert suppliers of this specialist type of PPE. There are too many dangerous risks been taken by companies who are not specialists in disposable PPE, suddenly trying to reinvent expertise and specialism that takes years to develop in a company. This results in avoidable large scale problems,” Yvette says. The old adage “Let the buyer beware” has never had such resonance.
Yvette went on to mention Hunter Apparel and how we have been able to adapt quickly and scale up production and supply of PPE. With our prior knowledge and skills in this area Hunter were able to switch our focus from workwear clients who were not having much demand during the crisis and put all our attention onto front line PPE. We had already been supplying items to this sector so it was a matter of changing how we processed things internally and restructured some of the departments to make us more agile and we were able to then cope with the quick turnaround of the PPE.
This article has shown that we can an example to others in the industry of how to stick to what you know and that when you have knowledge in an area how powerful that can be. To read Yvettes full article click of the link below: