Theo Paphitis, Entrepreneur and former Dragons’ Den star believes the pandemic has fast-forwarded business by five years according to an interview with the BBC back in May 2020.
Change that previously may have taken 2-3 years minimum to implement was achieved in weeks. Cloud based services have enabled sectors such as education to rapidly switch from physical to virtual learning. Other businesses have adapted by switching their focus from car manufacturers making ventilators to fashion houses making PPE.
Online shopping has increased the fortunes of e-commerce businesses and been increased by those who would have never attempted it previously. Zoom (or Teams, whichever your preferred flavour) has enabled business meetings to be conducted quickly and efficiently without the hassle of travel or take the time it used to involve.
This obviously all has an impact on businesses that relied on these traditional ways of life as we knew them. Retail will never be the same, also echoed by Theo Paphitis, travel, whether by car, rail or air have all been affected and unlikely to ever revert to exactly the way things were. Offices aren’t quite as critical as they once seemed, that evening out at a restaurant now being thought about as not quite as appealing maybe?
The world evolves and unfortunately, there will be those who suffer as a result, but there is nothing that can be done to revert to the way things were.
At Machinery World, like most businesses, the last six months have been challenging, but we continue to operate as normally as possible. We’re still taking plenty of orders and although we’re not an e-commerce business, we’re fully utilising our website and social media channels, ensuring we take even more videos and post these on-line to showcase our machinery.
We continue to ship orders worldwide with a recent factory installation in Barbados, along with further business conducted face to face in Turkey and Ireland recently.
If you would like any advice on purchasing machinery, have machinery to sell or need machinery servicing or repairing, please get in touch through the normal channels and we’ll be more than happy to assist.