Ok, here’s the update you’ve been waiting for. Obviously, it’s been a while since we’ve gotten a restock or even made a post. We do have more stock coming. Two shipments to be precise. They’ve been in transit for a while now. We’ve been dealing with some supply chain problems of our own. Basically, over the summer, Indonesia was the number one covid hot spot globally. So, shipping into and out of the country ground to a halt. Things got moving again towards the end of September, but they were left with a massive backlog. Which brings us to the other half of the problem the global supply chain problem. It’s not just sea cargo either. Air cargo is loaded into cargo hold of commercial flights. There aren’t separate flights to carry packages. There are less people traveling so there’s less flights. Which means less room for cargo. Because of the sea cargo problem companies that would have normally shipped by sea are now sending by air further crowding the limited space available.
The bottom line is we’re looking at getting our next shipment in mid-December. It’s possible we’ll get extremely lucky and get it before that, but don’t count on it. We do have two shipments coming right now. One of them is another big one like 58. We know it’s not as exciting as getting more frequent smaller batches, but the larger ones are a necessity right now. If 58 wasn’t a large one, we would have run out in August and still be out now. Once the supply chain problems sort themselves out, we’ll go back to smaller more frequent shipments. We’re currently considering whether it’s worth getting in any stock from a domestic supplier in the meantime, and there will most likely be a “From the Vault” in the next month.
The other important thing to consider right now is Holiday Shipping. We have every reason to expect it to be every bit as much of a catastrophe as last year. It’s already getting bad. I’d like to think that the shipping companies, USPS, in particular learned their lesson, but realistically probably not (I’m looking at you USPS). If you want to ensure that you get your order in, in a sane amount time after Thanksgiving, you’re better off going with UPS. If you don’t remember literally every package shipped USPS last December was at least 2-3 weeks late, and often a whole month. UPS ran on average 2-4 days late, still bad, but much better than USPS. USPS did do ok on the overnight, but there were still some significant delays. To be clear once it really starts to back up there won’t be anything we can do! We’ve already been sporadically having trouble accessing the USPS tracking system for the last couple weeks. You will do much better assuming that your package will be late and ordering early!
Thanks and Happy Holidays!
Treasure House Botanicals,
Ben + Lindsay
