VOW Wholesale have announced plans to extend their operational schedule and trading window over the festive break. In a change to previous years, VOW’s distribution centre will continue to pick and despatch all direct delivery sales volumes between Christmas and New Year.
Operations Director Martin Weedall says that changing customer behaviour and discussions with VOW’s value add resellers has led to this change in approach.
“While forecasting sales volumes in the current situation remains a challenge, we recognise the importance of maintaining a “business as usual” stance as far as possible to support our VOW resellers. The COVID-19 pandemic has driven many changes in the way we all live and work, especially when it comes to the number of people now working from home. This change in end-user dynamics is one that we have seen ourselves from an operational perspective and feedback from resellers has been that extending our trading window over the Christmas period would be a welcome development in support of their own service offering.”
VOW is anticipating that working habits over Christmas may also change, with home-working leading to the potential for additional demand over the traditional holiday period.
Marketing Director Helen Wade says, “We know that there is a definite trend to people buying from local businesses and that is great news for resellers. We will make sure that we do all we can to support them in building relationships and providing great service to their customers. Opening the warehouse between Christmas and New Year to facilitate deliveries on December 30th and 31st is not something VOW has done previously, but it is necessary this year to support our reseller community and in response to changing customer behaviour.”
VOW will be writing to resellers with full details of all delivery schedules shortly.