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Against All The Odds

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@cryptoandcoffee
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Business today in these times is a struggle and one has to just remain patient and positive in your beliefs that you are doing the right thing. having years of experience being able to sell anything counts for nothing right now as very few businesses are even trading here. The ones that are can't even move suppliers until further restrictions have been lifted.

Last week I managed to scrape together some orders from my existing client base who are kind of working, but also kind of not if that makes sense. Most companies are on skeleton staff right now with most working from home where possible or working in shifts so as to not be shut down completely. Any business with some savvy would surely be operating like that one would have thought.

Sasol our current supplier and only supplier in the country has been retrenching staff in the thousands and that isn't the problem. The problem is key personnel who run and operate certain parts of their plant are in quarantine and we have to wait for them to return back to work. Many of us thought they were exporting all the product for higher prices yet that isn't the case. Some inside information made us relax a bit more today yet it still isn't great news considering.

Not only have they thrown a price increase out last week but now they are limiting everyone on how much material we can all buy. My one large customer who buys in excess of 40 000 kg's at any one time can only have maybe a quarter next week. This puts me in a bind as we have to think about all our customers and not just supply a handful.

I am not worried I will lose them as every supplier is in the same boat right now and wish I could lay my hands on more material. Normally I could stall if the problem was on our end, but it is out of our hands right now. Talk about a perfect opportunity to gain market share by supplying the bigger accounts who are surely going to run out very soon. This is Africa so this is not over yet and a plan needs to be hatched to get our hands on the raw materials whatever it takes.

My train of thought is if somehow we can increase our orders and prove our needs have increased we can possibly obtain the extras required. If you sit back and accept defeat at minor obstacles then you are never going to move forward. I can normally talk my way out of anything so I will give this my best shot on Monday as Friday's are always a waste of time with important matters. I have never understood the working mentality as staff are only conscious Mondays to Thursdays and Friday has already joined the weekend somehow.

I hope everyone else who has a business is not finding difficulties like we are and things are getting back to normal. I dream of the normal and will never complain again. I do take comfort in knowing that roughly 85% of the country is treading water right now and not swimming off into the distance.