We all kinda knew this was coming as we warned after the referendum calling for the UK to leave the European Union but we’re sorry to say, we are starting to see multiple price increases on spare parts as the effects of the looming Brexit begin to be felt.
We already reported on the Bosch Group price increase that affected Bosch, Neff and Siemens spare parts but we’ve now had warnings from a number of suppliers of increases in costs of between 4% and 7% over all but some are running higher.
Word reached us that the Candy Group that owns Candy, Baumatic and Hoover among other brands is pumping up its prices by up to 12%!
A bigger problem however is that some of these are “average” price increase so you can get anomalies in most such as no change or a massive price hike on a single item.
This irregularity in the way these increases are being carried out will catch us and many other spares suppliers out with incorrect pricing and, where the pricing has to be looked at one product at a time, could cause a bit of disruption for months on end, if not years as tens of thousands of spare part prices are updated.
As we use multiple suppliers in the UK and Europe we are not quite as badly affected as many retailers tied to one supply chain might be. And, we can look at stuff sensibly so we will of course we will do our very utmost to keep all this and any hassle to a minimum but, it is what it is and we all have to deal with the effects.
Basically. we’ll do the best we can for our customers as always.
Some people will of course say that some companies are just profiteering and that might well be true but we think that would be the exception and not the rule. Most suppliers and, to be fair, manufacturers have or are holding their prices as long as they can but, as new stock comes in they suffer the price hikes just like everyone else does.
The reality is that currency value shifts of 10-15% or more make it completely impractical if even possible to maintain the same prices as before the values moved.
Like Apple and goodness knows who all else though, if the values shift back to previous levels do we expect them to drop the prices again?
We’ll let you guess from the sarcastic tone what we think here.
