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The Brexit Effect

The Brexit Effect

Published by Michiel Brouns on 13th May 2021

Whether you voted ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, we were very disappointed when we learnt the impact of the Brexit negotiations could have on businesses like ours.

In the run up to the leaving date, we did everything we could to prepare our business for the new order of things. This included preparations for some of the more obvious changes such as customs charges, as well as less obvious ones such as more complicated regulations.

One of the key adaptations we needed to make was to rework our IT and admin systems to be able to continue to provide the same high level of customer service to everyone who buys from us, whatever the EU membership status of the country they live in.

Of course, changes like these are expensive to make. We were also rather disheartened that a better deal for import charges wasn’t negotiated in order to support small businesses.

Just as we consider our high customer service a non-negotiable, we are also not prepared to compromise on the quality of our products. All the best ingredients to make linseed paint (boiled oil, pigments and machinery) come from mainland Europe. As a result of this, we now have to pay considerable customs charges.

Unfortunately, this is a situation where some compromise is necessary, and if we’re not prepared to budge on customer service or paint quality, something else has got to give. Because of this, last year we made the difficult decision to implement a price increase for UK customers. This price increase helps to offset the cost of custom charges as well as our increased IT and admin responsibilities. We have kept this increase as small as possible.

We look forward to being able to continue to supply beautiful, high quality linseed paint for many years to come. Together, we can all do our bit to reduce our use of plastics and work towards supporting a better, healthier planet.