“We knew that we had to find ways to help and inspire customers, and we knew it was never going to be plain sailing – two of our senior management had to self-isolate for 12 weeks,” Alister explains. “Fortunately, most of the team live with couple of miles of the shop, so we managed to put in place three volunteers to go in. Other team members worked from home so we could keep dealing with customers and process orders.
Apart from wanting to tear our hair out because of the slow Internet speeds up in the highlands of Scotland, we have adjusted very well and will open the store as soon as we can (see page 8).” The lockdown has prompted Ffordes to be even more active on social media, and has also arranged some well-received webinars with camera makers, featuring Steve Gosling, Andy Rouse and macro photographer Steve Wright.
“We’ve also been running some great deals, such as discounts on the Fujifilm X-T3, the Canon EOS 5D IV, £50 off the Tamron 35-150mm. extra Zeiss discounts and so on.” Despite the challenging times for retailers, Alister is positive about the future. “We believe photography will be a big help to people in years to come as they deal with the far-reaching effects of this lockdown – depression and anxiety can be overcome by creative hobbies such as photography.” See more here.
