How does holiday shopping impact international logistics?
The impact can be brutal, if poor planning is in place, efficiency is not on the management’s top priorities, and of course, details are neglected. And that is why these days more than ever before, we keep listening and reading about supply-chain problems, logjams in ports worldwide, and the danger of unavailability of products.
Nevertheless, this doesn’t have to be this way. And in many ways, we know it is not.
First of all, many of these so-called ‘supply chain problems’ are not linked directly to the supply chain, or to the season’s holidays, but to pandemic-related issues in manufacturing sites.
According to the New York Times (Oct 2021): “The disruptions go back to early last year, to the beginning stages of the pandemic. Factories in parts of the world where a lot of the globe’s manufacturing capacity sits —places like China, South Korea and Taiwan as well as Southeast Asian nations like Vietnam and European industrial giants like Germany— were hit hard by the spread of coronavirus cases. Many factories shut down or were forced to reduce production because workers were sick or in lockdown. In response, shipping companies cut their schedules in anticipation of a drop in demand for moving goods around the world.”
So, the problem is of a much larger scale than what common wisdom suggests. Also, that end-of-the-year purchases impact only buyers on a personal level. The difficulties and challenges posed are of a much larger scale, involving also companies, corporations and governments.
Of course, at this time of the year – when Christmas purchases in the United States and Canada coincide with Thanksgiving shopping, the problem feels and is more acute.
According to the analytics firm and website ROIRevolution (July 2021): “Overall US holiday sales are expected to grow 8.5-10.5% this year to as much as $859 billion after increasing 8.2% last year. Pre-pandemic, holiday sales averaged around 4.4% growth each year.”
This means that even in the months previous to Christmas’ eve, the demand for wholesale logistics services -needed to ensure that large retail stores and ecommerce stores have the necessary stocks- is greater than ever. Fundamentally, between October and December there is a very significant growth in courier services demand for sending purchases to the whole world.
Now, these courier services have priority when allocating space in the aircraft holds, and if not managed properly, bottlenecks, increases in airfare prices and less certainty when hiring a space will occur.
This is when our service becomes of assistance.
Aerodoc provides DDP services with importer of record where technological and telecommunications equipment must reach their destination. This ensures that the end user can receive their goods on time, and also provide their services on time.
Making this happen requires a very precise planning of each stage of the equipment’s movement, foresight in the contracting of air services; working with priority rates; establishing long-term relationships with our suppliers; and anticipating alternative reservations in case of failure of the original one.
At Aerodoc, we work with our clients with medium-term plans in order to schedule shipments and thus reduce possible delays to the minimum. As these clients and partners across the world can attest, even when the supply chain breaks, we deliver.
To many, this may sound like a miracle. To us, it’s just business as usual.
