Nu Air
Welcome to The Pivot series, where we celebrate the resilience and innovation of Atlantic Canadian entrepreneurs who adapted tremendously to face the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. We asked business leaders from across the region to tell us in their own words how they navigated the new economy and the lessons they learned along the way. Here is what one entrepreneur had to say.
David Deacon, CEO
Nu Air
We were in a turnaround situation prior to the pandemic and so business as usual was in great flux at the time. We were just starting to implement new procedures around the purchasing of building materials as the company, under former management, was constantly running out of the appropriate materials and therefore late in delivering our products. For us, ‘’business as usual’’ was already unusual so the pandemic became a form of accelerator for our transformation.
We were fortunate to have taken Covid very seriously even before it left China. It was my view that it had a high chance to disrupt our China-dependent supply chain, but perhaps even more important to us, it would disrupt our competitors' supply chains perhaps even more than ours. This meant that if we could get our building materials inventories up quickly, it could put us in a strong competitive position. It turns out that purchasing a lot of inventory at that time was the best decision we could have made: over time, our reputation became synonymous with reliability and that is exactly what our objective was.
Since the early days of the pandemic, we haven’t had to modify our approach. We continue to stock about 2 to 4 months of materials inventory in any long-lead items. We have definitely surprised our clients with our short lead times compared to the industry.
If I had to offer advice to an entrepreneur faced with a similar situation, I would remind them that every business has different parameters and different financial levers. It’s very important to understand what yours are so you can respond effectively. For example, our business is an assembly and manufacturing business, so building materials and a safe workforce were our most important concerns. We couldn’t do anything about reduced market demand, but we could ensure that as it recovered, we were ready for it. So having some cash on hand made it easier to make smarter decisions and I think that is always true regardless of what business you are running.
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