By Jennifer Meek, Director of Marketing for Charlotte Products Ltd

As we reflect on the ups and downs of working in the cleaning business in 2020, we must extend our gratitude to the hard workers who managed our supply chain to allow us to continue providing the essential products needed to fight this global pandemic. One of those heroes is Charlotte Products Purchasing and Inventory Manager Dave Jones. We recently caught up with Dave to say thank you and ask him to reflect on the busiest, and more important year, ever.

JM: Can you tell us about your role at Charlotte Products?

DJ: I’m in charge of the procurement of anything used, which includes the materials we make, or materials needed for packaging. Also, I assist in maintenance parts ordering and production parts for our filling lines. But I begin every day with my daily stock counts, where we count the entire warehouse. We fix all the areas we find on our daily counts, finding any errors before we send out our customer orders.

JM: How has your job changed since COVID-19?

DJ: I’ve always had a busy job, but this year has been incredibly busy. Now we are operating on two shifts and moving materials twice as quickly. The extended hours to cover the needs of our customers and ensure that everybody has the cleaning products they need means that during the height of COVID, we were working around the clock. Another big change was being able to procure materials with demand being so high. Everyone in the world was after the same materials, like the quaternary ammonium for disinfectants and the alcohol for hand sanitizer. We all wanted to procure that at the same time and we had to rely on our relationships with suppliers to secure those materials.

JM: You’ve worked really hard to meet supply demand for products. What are some of the successes you’ve had? 

DJ: We were able to be proactive in looking ahead to streamline our production process so that we could make our products as efficiently as possible to meet demand. For example, early on we enhanced our reverse osmosis water system which we used to make our disinfectants and that almost tripled our production capabilities. That foresight really helped our team stay ahead. 

JM: You handle procurement, what were some of the ways you were able to secure the raw materials needed to produce our products, with demand being so high?

DJ: We are really proud of our long-term relationships with our vendors and because of that we were able to get what we need. We often relied on trading with our suppliers in some of the more challenging times during the spring of 2020. For example, one of our vendor partners ran out of bottles, so we sent them bottles. When we ran out of caps, they were able to give us some to hold us over. That kind of give and take system really worked for us.

JM: What is your favorite part of your job?

DJ: I like the challenge. It’s fast paced and you never know what you are going to come into during a day. You get to learn a new skill and circumvent an issue you would have been up against. There was a lot of that this past year!

This year has been a team effort here at Charlotte and within the entire cleaning industry. We are grateful to the heroes on our staff like Dave who have risen to the challenge and allowed us to meet the demand of the pandemic, providing the tools everyone needs to make their spaces healthier and safer. If you’d like to know more what we are doing or to connect with one of our experts, please email us at experts@charlotteproducts.com