As the coronavirus continues to spread it’s our responsibility to ensure the safety of staff, suppliers and customers. We value the great personal relationship we have with our customers and suppliers. With this in mind, we feel that it’s important to assure you of the stringent and thorough procedures we have in place.

Supply Chain

We are taking all practicable measures possible to ensure we continue to supply our range of products with an uninhibited level of support and continue to prioritise the values we hold dear in our relationship.

As long as there is product available and functioning transport networks to get it to us (and from us to you) we are confident that we will continue to be able to source and supply products.
We obviously cannot guarantee that every product will continue to be available or that there will be no lags in supply, but we already have existing contingencies to mitigate supply-side risk as far as possible.

Ordering 24/7

If you have an online shop account, you can continue to place orders with us 24/7. If you are working flexibly and would like to register for an online account go here or give us a call.

Pricing

We are already seeing increases in prices in some areas and there are rumours of significant increases in other areas thus far not affected.

Please get in touch if you are concerned about credit, we are here to help you and support your business during this time.

Supply and demand (obviously) determine pricing. We are also determined not to take advantage of this unprecedented situation and our policy is to fix current pricing and if the situation changes, we will keep you fully informed.

Steps QED is taking in response to the outbreak

Our priorities are to function as normal, to continue to service our customers with no dip in standards, and to protect all our staff.

We have widespread provisions in place for homeworking and we have provisions in place to move everyone to home-working if and when necessary.  This will have no impact on our service to you. In reality you won’t even notice the difference; phone numbers, email addresses, skype etc will all be the same and staff have access to all the same systems they use on-site.

Of course, not everyone can work from home. We need to maintain our warehouse plus a skeleton staff to cover other essential on-site functions. We’ve introduced a number of measures to mitigate the threat and provide a safe environment for all our staff including:

• All common surfaces – door handles, handrails, light switches etc – throughout the building are cleaned throughout the day
• Gloves issued to all warehouse staff handling product
• New procedures at goods-in including prohibiting delivery drivers from entering the building
• New procedures for customer collections – the showroom will be wiped clean before and after each visit and will be open from 8:30am-5:30pm, Monday to Friday, until further notice
• New procedures for external visitors – essentially, we won’t receive any external visitors unless they are assessed as both low-risk and business critical 
• Additional measures introduced in kitchen and canteen areas including replacement of towels with paper towels
• Clear guidance issued to all staff on procedures including personal and workplace hygiene
• New procedures for self-isolation
• Consistent monitoring of the situation by management to continuously evolve our policies in line with changing circumstances

Uncertain times …

These are, by definition, uncertain times; we’ve no idea how the virus will spread nor the wider impact on behaviour or economies. What we can guarantee is that – as always – we’re here to help and will be throughout the coronavirus threat and well beyond. Our customers have supported us for 20+ years and we will always support you in return.

So in these uncertain times, whatever help or support you need or concerns you have, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Keep safe.

Matt Philp
Product Development Director

01772 336111