[Washington Examiner] The coronavirus outbreak has injected a high level of uncertainty for many businesses who depend on products from China but are clueless as to when they will arrive."You can’t get a straight answer," said John Mack, president of Frontier Illumination. "We talked to somebody recently for a pretty big order, and they told us mid-May is the best they can do. Other guys are saying ’we just don’t know,’ so there’s a lot of variables. ... The level of certainty is rather low."
Mack’s company provides LED lighting for commercial, industrial, and institutional markets and is located in Carson, California. More than 90% of the components for LED lighting are produced in China, according to Mack. And with the virus shutting down plants there, lead times for those products have increased from four to six weeks to waits that stretch to 15 weeks.
"We’re finding significantly increasing lead times and a great deal of uncertainty around them," Mack said, adding that "my biggest concern is sitting around with no product."
Mack said his company is flush enough to handle lagging lead times in the short term, but it could eat into his bottom line if the problem persists.
"There will be projects in April that won’t get done until May, at the very least. I think it’s going to hurt us, yes," he said. Mack, age 50, started his business in 2014 after losing his job trading stocks. Not wanting to move to New York City to find another job on Wall Street, Mack decided to change careers and start his own business.
/\ Well said Mike.