While the country went into lockdown and everything slowed down, our teams of warehouse operatives carried on. In this blog, we’d like to both applaud them and also look at the wider national and global effort from the supply chain.

Lockdown has perhaps fuelled growth at a faster rate than anticipated in yearly predictions, but whether this trend will continue and to what extent is yet unknown. Likely, the longer the return to “normal” and with people reducing visiting busy shops where possible, the extended impact of online shopping will be felt.

Recent growth and troubles

An already steady increase in online shopping meant that most companies were somewhat prepared for lockdown and the closure of physical stores.

One major example of a company that has gone from everything to nothing is Primark.  From sales of £650m to literally nothing, the company is currently relying on its parent company AB Foods to carry on.

“Although AB Foods derives some benefit from product and geographical diversification in other parts of the group, the impact of the loss of Primark income, even if temporary, is a major blow,”

said Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor.

Being adaptable and flexible to the quickly changing lockdown rules and restrictions is the key. At Bray, we’ve always been flexible, and the core of our business is scalability and growth.

One of our customers Liberty Games said

“We have found Bray Solutions to be very helpful since the lockdown was initiated.

We have been able to place orders as normal with responsive, quick-reaction Bray staff, and have seen them all dispatched to customers within normal timeframes. Bray’s new hygiene practices mean that we can make orders with confidence for delivery to customers all around the UK. This includes their increased hand-washing and glove-wearing for staff handling products and packaging, making our products as safe as possible for our consumers.

Bray’s new systems and smooth, uninterrupted operation have enabled us to concentrate on other areas of our business during this difficult time.”

Our growth as a company

Online retail sales compromised 21.5% and 20% of all retail sales in November and December 2018 respectively, up from approx.12% in 2013 and 6% in 2008. (Data from ONS Retail Sales Index.) 

Here at Bray, we’ve grown year on year. 2019 was a great year for us. We increased our warehouse by 20k square feet of new build to increase pallet capacity by 1,800 pallets. This year we hope to increase by around a further 3000 pallets expanding our warehouse space by a further 50% by 2021.