Case study – SGW Global
Supply 100,000 disposable face masks
Company background: SGW Global specializes in the manufacture, design, sales and distribution of a wide array of consumer electronic products and services. As a truly global operation, SGW have their Corporate HQ along with two manufacturing centres in China, a European Operations Centre in the UK, and sales divisions in Germany, North America and Australia.
They employ 3000+ people across the globe and have worked with the likes of Motorola, BT, Panasonic & Sanyo, Lenova.
Scope of works: SGW Global HQ in China needed to source 100,000 disposable masks for their 2000+ staff in various factories across China. Following the corona virus (Covid-19) mandatory closure of all factories until further notice, the Chinese government outlined that factories would only be able to re-open if they qualified on certain criteria, one of them being that they must provide disposable face masks.
SGW Global quickly found out that there were many companies in China scrambling to source disposable face masks. Price quickly rose and all of the UK’s wholesalers ran out of stock. In normal circumstances, they would have paid $6000 in China or £10,000 in the UK. The prices had rose to £80,000 to buy from a UK retailer, and they were forced to buy some of their supply at this price.
Payment terms: Client to purchase directly from IC Retail Solutions. IC Retail Solutions to bear financial responsibility on locating the product and liability if product was not to required specification.
Outcome: We quickly found out that stock from obvious retailers had been depleted and knew that we would need to look at unorthodox methods to locate the product. We contacted all disposable face mask manufacturers in Asia to ask for information on where their previous orders had been sent. Most of them were not happy to disclose this information, but with powers of persuasion, leads began to come through.
Once we had the UK importers details it was a simple case of striking a deal with them to take large quantities. We delivered their product to their London Office within 2 days. In the end, we saved SGW Global 25% on what they were prepared to pay from the retailer they had found.