Fuel Shortages, high utility bills, empty shelves at the supermarkets and shortage of labour don't sit in a bubble. And as you have noticed, all reenactment suppliers have been struggling to maintain and deliver the same service and stock of pre-covid times.

Such tidings are challenging for all - from governments to small home businesses. But some have the means to leverage things more than others. We do not, and with that in mind, I want to thank everyone who still believed and trusted us with your orders over the past nine years. It's also gratifying and humbling how you have supported us over the past 18 months. You've borne with us with patience when we had to take much longer to deliver orders, or in some instances, couldn't do so at all. We've lost half of our suppliers due to health issues or going out of business during these times.

So what the future holds for us? We are not giving up yet, as you'll see some restocks taking place in October and November, with the bulk of things arriving next year. However, over the past year transport costs have skyrocketed, with prices increasing up to 8 times that of pre-covid times. And this affects anything, from transporting originals to be copied, sourcing the materials for hardware, to transport the cloth.

We've limited the increase in prices to very few items only, as we hoped this would stabilise in a few months, but the prices are still going up, and we find ourselves at crossroads. We are looking at ways of mitigating this as we want supplies to remain available for our clients as much as possible. We are now focusing on the next reenactment season in 2022, trying to make items available earlier. We will maintain our preferential rates for DHL express service as standard delivery to ensure that orders arrive safely and much faster.

We are also taking several actions to get our house in better order to restore our level of service by next year. We have now stopped selling things on pre-order, which also includes tailoring options. We hope to make these available again next year. Restocking will be sporadic this year, therefore it would be best to subscribe to the Luftwaffe Supplies newsletter and follow our socials to be updated as things become available again.