Covid's arrival brought chaos to the UK. What bad timing. Just as I was about to place my order for this years Hydrus II, the UK was placed in lockdown.
I was worried we might all be kept inside throughout the summer. It affected how many boats I ordered so rather than being stuck with a bunch of boats and a huge business loan to pay off I limited my order to just 10 boats. On the plus side it meant I didn't need a big bank loan and luckily the factory allowed me to drop my order from 30 to 10 so I made the call. There was no way back now. I had to make a decision.
Within two weeks of me confirming my order, out came the sun and Boris decides to ease the lockdown. Typical. It was too late to change my order again. I only had ten boats coming over and all ten boats were pre sold within weeks. Thanks COVID and Boris, you're timing sucks.
So with ten boats sold I was left the rest of the summer with no more Hydrus to sell. Sales of Takacats and engines were still coming in but my pride and joy The Hydrus had all sold out.
Anyway, I decided to keep the Hydrus ad that I placed on Facebook marketplace running to see how much interest the boat could still get throughout the summer. inflatable boats were definitely selling well in general.
I was getting messages daily throughout the rest of the summer. The phone rang pretty much every other day and I was getting untold emails all asking if the Hydrus was still available.
So although I was gutted I had no more to sell, it gave me huge confidence in ordering more as soon as I possibly could.
It takes 40 days in production and 30 days on the water to get more Hydrus to the UK so I decided to count my losses and concentrate on getting more over for 2021.
Ah well, it could have been a lot worse.