The Impact of COVID-19 on Bowen & Bowen Ltd. and Companies
Globally, COVID-19 is having an impact on life as well on the business environment in significant ways. The Bowen and Bowen group has a workforce of over one thousand two hundred employees and is one of the largest employers in the production of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. The virus does not discriminate and has been hitting businesses big and small. The company’s C.E.O., Michael Bowen, says they have had to take various measures to cut costs, but not staff, to stay ahead of the virus. Here is News Five’s Duane Moody with a report.
Duane Moody, Reporting
Like all other businesses, COVID-19 has posed challenges to the Bowen and Bowen Limited and Companies. One of the larger employers in the country, Bowen and Bowen has over one thousand two hundred persons employed across its various businesses. C.E.O. Michael Bowen says that the company has experienced a sixty percent dip in its revenues for beverages, and the projection is not promising because one of its biggest customers, the tourism industry has shuttered.
Michael Bowen
Michael Bowen, C.E.O., Bowen & Bowen Ltd.
“Month to date, we are down sixty percent in the beverage business. Across the board, I think we are deflected off our top line cumulative earnings about fifteen percent. But that s gonna continue growing as we have a deficit for the next few months. We are expecting, we budgeted a COVID-19 forecast of this month and next month of sixty percent down in sales and then forty percent thereafter through the Q-three and then the Q-four depends on whether tourism starts to come back or some more regulations, But that’s our predictions through the year.”
Fortunately, the private company has not cut down its employees, but the staff had to take a pay cut to ensure the survival of the business. Overhead cost-cutting measures have been put in place.
Michael Bowen
“We have not committed any reduction in headcount; we are committed to our staff. We have been communicating on a daily basis with our leadership team and on a weekly basis we have a company-wide town hall. We’ve also opened up a suggestion box; we want and soliciting feedback from our staff and all our members as well as their concerns. It is amazing how the team has pulled together to understand for the safeguard of everybody. Yes there has been some austerity emotions, we have been doing some cost-savings, but these cost-savings have actually come from suggestions from staff as well as ideas on how to reach our customers. And you might have seen that we have actually implemented our own sale delivery system which we had done for years as part of this effort. But our commit is to our staff and to maintain them. What we did, we asked staff to take their vacation during that period so in the beverage company about seventy-five percent of the staff was on vacation; only twenty-five percent was coming in. And that was kinda across all the other companies—whether in food distribution or real estate—we asked staff to take their vacations so they were able to be fully paid through that period.”
Under the initial state of emergency, the company was restricted in the sale of alcoholic beverages and carbonated drinks; it was only allowed to produce and distribute crystal water. But even so, water sales were down. C.E.O. Michael Bowen spoke about some of the trends that the company experienced.
Michael Bowen
“The first week, we were restricted to only selling water through our distribution systems. So the trucks would go out to the customers and we could only deliver water. However, through the stores that we have at our sales centres, we were able to deliver and sell soft drinks and beers, but that was all by pickup and it had to be pre-ordered for picking. The second week, it opened up so we could sell soft drinks and beer, but we weren’t able to produce more soft drinks and beer. So this week, we are trying to catch up with the inventory because based on the regulations changing on Saturday, we have been able to open the factories again. Beer has been our hardest hit. With all on premise locations being closed, restaurants not having any dining services, bars and clubs have been closed; that’s an entire channel that has been stopped. So some restaurants even if they are doing takeout don’t necessarily sell alcohol or drinks with their takeout orders. So people are having to pick it up from the stores, but as you know stores are limiting the amount of people that can go in and people are restricting the amount of visits they are doing to stores so overall it is just harder to get and people with less money in their pocket are just buying more staples and the basics. I don’t know about hoarding, but certainly the demand went up and with five gallon is where the major demand went. And when people bought a few extra bottles that are not expected in the forecast, those bottles stay home and we don’t have them to refill and so we had to place special emergency orders to get more bottles in to fulfil the demand because people had more in their homes rather than have those bottles flow through the system like they would normally do. So we have been filling demand, some of the restricted production hours have made it hard to continue meeting it, but we are doing what we can to satisfy the demand in the market.”
Bowen says that while this year’s extended drought will cause some demand for water, COVID-19 will continue to lower consumer demand. Duane Moody for News Five.
