Weekly summary 10/2020

Hi,

this is a summary of what was going in the doll world in the 10th week of 2020, as far as we at Dollstudio & DS Doll Europe were concerned.

1) Novel Coronavirus situation.

As in the weeks before, the economy remains overshadowed by SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) respectively COVID-19 (the disease). In an attempt to contain the Novel Coronavirus outbreak, the Chinese government implemented a strict set of traveling restrictions and quarantines across the whole country. The hot zones in Wuhan and Hubei province are still tightly sealed off, but other cities and provinces are starting to gradually lift their containment protocols. As of today, most factories have started to resume production.

The few factories which are already open do not run at full capacity yet as there is a shortage of workers, and ripple effects from severed supply chains for raw materials, skeleton parts, eyes, wigs, cardboard boxes etc. are to be expected.

There is a huge backlog going back to Dec 16th (cut-off date for new orders before Chinese New Year holidays). Only a few of our orders collected since then has been completed or even shipped yet. Fully functional is drop shipping to destinations in North America and outside the EU; for destinations within the EU, we expect to learn more within the next two weeks. Our DE and EU online shops remain closed until we get tangible signs that things are back to normal.

However, COVID-19 outbreaks are moving with horrible speed to other areas of the world. Most severely affected in Europe is Northern Italy where about 16 million peope are under quarantine since March 8th. Some destinations in the Lombary region can no longer reached for shipments for about a week due to quarantine measures.

On TDF we have a thread about the Novel Coronavirus situation: https://dollforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1662048#p1662048.

2) Factory photos and shipped dolls.

Overview:

• From new orders between Jan 1st and Feb 1st completed: 1 (PI)
• Backlog completed from stock: 1 (CLM)
• Backlog completed from recalled: 1 (IL)

Shipments:

• Order date: Dec 3rd (IL) / destination: US / factory photos: no / tracking code: yes / delivered: yes (Fedex)
• Order date: Jan 22nd (CLM) / destination: US / factory photos: yes / tracking code: yes / delivered: yes (Fedex)
• Order date: Jan 31st (PI) / destination: DE / factory photos: yes / tracking code: yes / delivered: no (UPS)

So both backlog orders to the U.S. made it out of China successfully and arrived in their respective destinations in North America (Arizona and Texas). It's a great relief that drop shipping with Fedex actually works smoothly.

For EU destinations we expect updates within the next 2-3 weeks, then we will know if the UPS special line is operational again, too.

Sandro