26/07/2021 - Another Covid Update (Sorry)

Good afternoon,

Nothing other than Covid lead times and Covid updates to report this month, so let's not waste any time and just get stuck straight in…

As of Friday 23rd July we have manufactured and dispatched all orders placed before 24th April, so current lead times (for standard product range orders that we will be working on next) are estimated to be 12 to 14 weeks.

This means that we are finally nearing closer to having the humongous backlog of orders placed in March & April manufactured & dispatched, which means (fingers crossed) we can now start reducing our lead times, over the coming months.

It’s been a monumental effort here at Optimise to squeeze in around 5 months worth of Classic Mini product range orders in under 3 months (for those of you who didn’t catch last months update, we received around 5 months worth of orders in March & April). I’m not really sure how we managed it to be honest, but then how we did it doesn’t really matter, all that matters is we can now start to try and get things back to normal.

Following the efforts of the team over the past 4 to 5 months though, we are all knackered and we will be taking a week out in August to recharge.

The opportunity has come about following a Covid isolation ping that frustratingly delayed a job on a customer's Mini, preventing them to be able to have the Mini ready for us in time and following a bit of a reshuffle, with a couple of other bespoke projects, we have been able to clear a week in our bespoke schedule.

As a result, we will be jumping at the chance of a break and taking a full week off, closing on Friday 13th August (at 17:00) and reopening on Monday 23rd August (at 08:30).

For me personally, I’m absolutely exhausted following my efforts to combat everything Covid has thrown at small business owners over the past 18 months or so, (despite trying to remain upbeat and positive about everything) it’s quite frankly been horrendous and this will actually be my first “proper” time off since early March 2020 - it is massively needed and long overdue.

Which brings us on nicely to show season 2021 and as mentioned back in March, just like everyone else we can’t wait to get our lives back to normal and this means that we don’t want to work weekends, so we will not be trading at shows this summer (including Himley Hall next weekend). Instead, you will probably find us walking around the shows enjoying life and enjoying the shows, from the other side of the counter, for a refreshing change.


Have a great evening.

Kind regards,
Andy & the Optimise Automotive team