Important Update - throughout August 2020

We realise that this is a very difficult time for everyone with unprecedented actions taken by the government that affect our businesses and personal lives. Here at SWL, we do remain open and are doing our best to service the online sellers that continue to trade. However, moving forward we have decided to re-structure the way we run the business to safeguard its future. As many people know, one of our greatest strengths is our large stockholding and ability to supply the trade in bulk at great prices. We are looking to reinforce this strength and simplify the way we run the company by implementing the following changes:

• We will be increasing our minimum order value to £500.00 (net) per order. There will no longer be any carriage charges for goods sent to UK mainland addresses. We will need to continue to charge carriage for non-mainland and export orders. For export orders we will now charge a fixed percentage of the order value for carriage which will vary from country to country. This will mean every customer will know the total invoice value before we pack the order.

• We plan to increase the minimum product order of many items so that we sell by the case, inner case or trade pack where possible. (This will mainly effect smaller packet items with lower values.)

• Although we generally do not offer credit terms, we have decided to withdraw all credit to the customers that currently receive this. As such, all orders will need to be paid for before they are sent out. This will help our cash flow and free up our accounts department that spends significant amounts of time chasing payments. It will also remove our exposure to bad debts. (We have recently had a handful of customers that have folded owing us money.) We do take all credit cards including American Express so customers wishing to pay by credit card can do so at no additional cost in both Sterling and Euro’s.

• We will ask that anyone wishing to visit our showroom to place or collect orders to call us in advance. We will also only be open for pickups on Wednesdays and Fridays. (For the remainder of April, we will be closed for collections.)

• To maintain brand image and a high level of service, we have decided that moving forward we will be issuing sellers on Ebay and Amazon platforms with Authorised Seller Certificates. These will be limited in numbers and should help certified on-line sellers in what is a very difficult and competitive marketplace. Our aim will be for only certified sellers to sell on these platforms. This won’t affect web sites, shops or any other traders. It will also only affect UK sellers, to begin with. This will involve following a charter that will ensure good customer service throughout. We hope that this step will make selling our products more profitable and worthwhile.

We realise that for some customers this will mean a significant change in the way we do business and for others there will be very little change. But please understand our reasons for these changes and the need to carry them out. (We are in discussion with a few UK wholesalers who will stock out products and continue to offer our items in smaller quantities. Further details will follow soon).