ImagesMagUK-July-2020

IS BRAND PROFILE www.images-magazine.com 44 images JULY 2020 been making PPE prior to the pandemic and were well set up. My colleagues visited factories and did a very good job in sourcing credible products.” Catastrophe averted The biggest challenges, however, were still to come. With Shanghai seven hours ahead, David has been working round the clock. “Things have been moving so fast and decisions must be made.” He adds that countless agents were camped out in hotels next to the Chinese factories in order to be the first to secure any new F rom mid-June, it became mandatory for people in England to wear face masks on public transport and when visiting hospitals. The new ruling triggered a surge in demand – one that Result Clothing and its distributors were already geared up to meet after introducing the Result Essential Hygiene range in May. In fact, Result’s managing director, David Sanders- Smith, has been on the case since March when he realised that life was about to change drastically due to the global pandemic and lockdown. “We saw that it was going to start to have a vast knock-on effect through our general business. Initially, to take responsibility as a company owner, I needed to look for ways to generate business to minimise its impact – a purpose for remaining open. Also, I was seeing in the news every day the government’s problems with sourcing PPE [personal protective equipment] for the health service, which would mean there was going to be an even worse situation for civilian needs.” Much of the UK’s PPE has come from China and fortunately Result already had an office in Shanghai handling quality control and exports. “It’s a family business like us, run by a mother and daughter. They have worked with me since 1990,” David explains. Drawing on contacts, the team in China sourced PPE such as face masks, goggles, gloves, wipes, hand sanitiser and face splash shields. “We realised in the early days that there would be a lot of scoundrels in China and Europe that would take advantage of this serious situation. We were looking for companies that had Result’s David Sanders-Smith talks to Mark Ludmon about the challenge of bringing a new range of face masks and PPE to the UK market during the coronavirus epidemic production capacity, and that failure to confirm an order with the factory owners and have the payment in place on the same day risked the order being sold to another buyer instead. Then there was the swerve ball of the Chinese government introducing new rules that meant PPE needed to be re-checked and re-certified ahead of export because of concerns about quality control. Result had five containers of CE-certified masks sitting on the docks at Shanghai that could not be shipped. Fortunately, a solution was found: if a company could prove that a mask was already certified, that the supplier had previously achieved certification, and there was a confirmation letter from a certification agency, they were permitted to export. “If there hadn’t been tolerances put in place by the EU and British standards to overcome this, it would have meant a total catastrophe for the world,” David says. Adding to the stress of the situation, China then shut down for a week-long Labour Day holiday in early May. With the five containers eventually shipped, Result looked to source more PPE within China for shipment by air. Only Chinese airlines were flying from China, so these goods had to be switched to other carriers at Bangkok. Adding further to the challenge of bringing the masks and other products to the Behind the mask The washable and reusable RV009X non-medical face mask in its new, extended range of colours The washable and reusable RV009X was sourced from the EU: Result is the sole UK importer