Underlines Magazine talks to Stephanie Dölker, co-owner of Naturana, German underwear & swimwear business with a UK subsidiary.
If you have not had cancellations or goods have been shipped, have you had to extend your credit terms to those customers who have had to close their frontline business?
We have offered a select few customers (mainly key accounts) extended credit of plus 30 days up until now.
Have you been able to keep in touch with your own team (if they are not on furlough)? Have you any amusing anecdotes about everyone working from home amidst family, kids or animals?
We’re keeping in touch via phone calls, Skype calls, emails etc. For me the most unamusing thing is how shockingly pale I look in a Skype conference and my hair always looks awful. We’ve met various family members who took a peek into the camera, which is actually quite a nice thing; it brings everyone closer together.
We are also using our WhatsApp group to check in with each other every morning to ensure that everyone in our team is doing ok, Skype once a week for visual contact and meetings to set goals and POA for the week. We are fortunate to have some with a very good sense of humour in our team and the daily jokes are brilliant and keep our morale up. We have been travelling into the office individually on selected days, taking it in turns most days and closing the roller-shutter doors behind us.
What role does social media play in either keeping touch with staff or consumers? (do you use Skype, Zoom …)
We use Skype, Zoom Trello, Filestage for keeping in contact with our staff. For contact with customers – Instagram, Facebook etc even old school telephone calls for our consumers. We’ve been making face masks which got a mention in the local paper and the phone has been ring off the hook. It is like in olden times, people call and order, we send out a driver to deliver with an invoice. We’ve even done some deliveries by bike!
Have you had to take the heavy decision to cancel orders to your own suppliers?
So far we’ve been able to postpone delivery dates rather than cancelling orders. This is something we are very glad about, especially as some of the suppliers in the Far East are really struggling when we cancel our orders. Many of the seamstresses there simply end up starving if they don’t work. We in the Western World have an obligation not to pass on our problems to them.
How are dealing with developments for upcoming seasons – SS2021 or AW2021? Obviously trade fairs are now postponed to August/September…will you be able to have virtual showrooms with your customers?
We don’t have plans for virtual showrooms yet, if all else fails we’ll send images/samples and take orders via phone/Skype conference etc.
Do you feel well informed and how do you feel the British government has responded to business needs e.g. job retention scheme, business interruption loan, etc..?
We do – this is unprecedented, we understand that. The financial support offered is immense; we also understand that this will have an impact on the economy for many months to come. Earlier and continued testing is imperative. The daily updates on TV are great, but the journalists do exasperate a little, asking the same questions, just in different sentences. Would be great to have a public Q&A with the government too.
Have you had opportunities to talk to professional bodies about your own situation?
So far, we haven’t had to yet.
With pause for thought during this crisis, do you envisage substantial changes in the way you run this post-Covid-19?
Luckily our business is very much based on never out of stock styles, we have few fashion styles which only run for one season (apart from swimwear). If anything the crisis has underlined that this is the way to go. Retail doesn’t seem to want fixed delivery dates anymore and neither do we.
The crisis has also helped us to realise that remote working actually works very well, you don’t always have to be in the same room to have a meeting – and it has brought all the Naturana team closer together. We all had to work together as a team to make the mask production come true – even our sample room in Germany is working at full throttle to make as many masks as we possibly can.
At Naturana we are fortunate to have a secure structure, policies and procedures in place to make remote working seamless. Technologies like Zoom really are a godsend and show how we can operate just as effectively as being in an office.
