PreschoolNews.net speaks to a number of suppliers and retailers to find out how they’ve adapted over the past four months. Today: HTI.
PreschoolNews.net/Progressive Preschool has been busy catching up with preschool suppliers and retailers to find out more about how they adapted their businesses over the past four months to cope with lockdown.
In addition, we also asked what concerns they have going forward as restrictions continue to ease.
Today: Michelle Dalziel, senior licensing and marketing manager, HTI.
“We have had challenges on orders from most bricks and mortar retail stores. This was an immediate blow for the business and the initial period was spent doing damage control. The leaders within the business have been having weekly calls and often bi-weekly in the early stages to allow for critical decisions to be made. As a privately owned business, we can act quickly and in turn helps us survive.
For our team, there was a big change to adapting to work from home and ensuring people adjust. It’s been a rollercoaster professionally and personally for most, so ensuring people are okay has been just as important.
From a business perspective, we have kept a fully staffed product development and design team to ensure we are ready for 2021 launches and ranges – it was important to keep those cogs in the business moving as we are constantly planning for the future.
Our sales team are in regular dialogue with the national accounts – their biggest challenge trying to balance supporting them as customers while also asking for their support back. We are all in this with one common goal and this is to maintain good business levels, so always believe this should be a partnership.
Despite some initial big asks from retailers, overall, we feel that reasonable terms have been agreed on both sides. Orders have been cancelled yes, but we have also managed to secure new orders and have also had acceptance on postponing orders.
All the obvious products such as games/puzzles from our pocket money category have performed well along outdoor products. We have been fortunate in remaining just as strong across all our categories such as vehicles, prams and scooters.
There are some potential new ways of working for this year as we know travel will be limited which affects how we do any of our customer meetings, therefore we need to be prepared for virtual previews with customers even once the restrictions have been lifted.”
This feature originally appeared in the June 2020 edition of Progressive Preschool. To read the full publication, click on this link.
