Amazon seller Bernie Thompson shifted half of his production out of China to reduce his business risks and still found himself in the crosshairs of logistical chaos besetting the movement of goods around the globe.
A surge in demand for furniture, exercise equipment and other goods for shoppers sheltering at home in a worsening Covid-19 pandemic has upended normal trade flows.
That has stranded empty cargo containers in wrong places, spawning bottlenecks that now stretch from factories to seaports. Container ship operators ferry the majority of consumer goods, and transportation and trade sources warn that prolonged industry disruption could cause shortages and complicate the global economic recovery.
Thompson, founder of Washington-based Plugable Technologies, sells work-from-home staples like laptop docking stations. He diversified sourcing to be less reliant on a single country for manufacturing and less exposed to US tariffs on Chinese goods.
Things did not go as planned and now, like many other importers, he is concerned about keeping enough products in stock.
His new factory in Thailand was first to suffer delays of about four weeks, in part because shipping companies routed empty containers to the top priority US-China trade lane. Those logistical snags cascaded and now his remaining shipments from China - the world’s No 1 manufacturer - are postponed by as much as three weeks.
He is not alone - US retailer Costco Wholesale Corp and Honda Motor Co Ltd in the United Kingdom have also suffered delays.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 24th, 2020.
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