The last few years have seen major changes in all areas. The promotional textiles sector is no exception.
Something everyone has realised is that customers need to get their items as quickly as possible. We're in the phase of "just in time", or urgent deliveries. Everyone puts off shopping until the last day and suddenly there's no room for manoeuvre. Logistics are a nightmare.
Curiously, we see customers moving in one direction and brands in another. We in the middle are left with very few options.
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Don't you realise what I'm talking about? I'll explain:
- In the last two years Sol's has stopped having a warehouse in Portugal and started shipping most of its products from Spain;
- Kariban - one of the brands we sell the most - also no longer has stock in Portugal to ship all its products from France;
- B&C no longer has as much stock in Portuguese distributors and some even no longer have all the references;
- In 2020, Mukua (a Portuguese brand) was sold to a Spanish company and only a small fraction of its products remain in Portugal.
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Of the more than 20 brands we represent, in 2020 only 4 have warehouses or distributors with stock in Portugal. When three years ago we had more than 70 per cent of our items available within 24 hours, today this percentage has dropped to less than 20 per cent (and we have a lot more items available from these suppliers).

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In other words, we see customers asking for urgent deliveries at the same time as we see brands taking longer to make deliveries.
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Let's add this to the growing difficulty with transport. In recent years we have seen companies like MRW, GLS, Envialia, Urbanos and SEUR disappear or be absorbed and logistics become practically impossible.

Today we have fewer transport players on the market, all of them overloaded (because there are more and more parcels on the streets) and with more and more incidents in their shipments. All it takes is a Google search to see this reality
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It's an explosive mixture! Everything takes longer to reach its destination when the need for fast deliveries increases.
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What is the solution to this problem? We don't know.
We try to advise our customers to use brands such as TH Clothes, which is the only Portuguese brand to have a warehouse in Portugal, or Kariban, which, despite the geographical distance, can deliver quickly.