The Mediterranean Industrial Summer Holiday

I don’t know how it is in other industries but in the pro audio and lighting market, here in the UK we always have to plan for our Italian and Spanish colleagues’ summer holidays!

Manufacturers in both countries indulge in their annual one month shut down for the whole of August. They all disappear to (other) sunny climes and leave us poor old Northern Europeans without access to equipment, spare parts or technical services.

I appreciate that this is a long standing tradition for such countries but, in this age of global trading, wouldn’t it be to everyone’s advantage and benefit for them to at least have a scaled down manufacturing and despatch service for the rest of us? Business normally slows down in the UK during August but it never stops dead. Attempting to create our own stockpile of products in July is often not financially viable and putting our clients off until September for their required deliveries is also not very impressive.

I deal with one Italian manufacturer which has a warehouse and despatch facility in Germany. – Now there’s a result!

David