We’ve arrived at the halfway point of 2021. Unsurprisingly, the disposable glove market continues to be dynamic and unpredictable, thanks to—what else?—COVID-19.
Market conditions have changed in the last six months. Global demand for gloves, which more than doubled since the pandemic’s outbreak, has softened, especially in the United States.
Whew. What a scorching weekend.
Folks on the U.S. West Coast, especially in the Pacific Northwest, have been suffering through unprecedented heat. Temperatures are expected to remain somewhere between miserable and dangerous through the week. Triple-digit highs and unusually warm nights have tested everyone’s patience (and the electrical grid as well).
The last 15 months since the coronavirus spread globally have, of course, been a frustrating time for everyone in the disposable glove industry.
For end users, a lot of that frustration stems from the lack of a consistent brand experience. If you can’t buy the gloves you want from a source you trust, you may have to use less-than-honorable sellers. And that means quality can suffer.
Fifteen months into the coronavirus pandemic, disposable glove distributors and their customers keep coming back to the same question: When can we get more nitrile gloves?
The answer for the most part remains the same: We don’t know for certain. What we do know, though, is that we have a healthy inventory of Gloveworks Black Nitrile Industrial Gloves.
Exam-grade nitrile is the glove material of the moment.
Anyone hoping for a steady stream of nitrile gloves this summer had better expect obstacles. Supply chains are still backed up, which increases the number of backorders. Malaysia’s ongoing coronavirus crisis is putting the country in near total lockdown, causing labor shortages and severely limiting production.
If your customers need nitrile gloves right now, AMMEX Professional’s line of exam-grade disposable gloves is a welcome solution.
In last week’s blog post, we wrote about disposable glove thickness, which can be a source of confusion for end users (and sometimes even distributors). This week we examine how to choose the right glove material for the job.
When the coronavirus went global in early 2020, the disposable glove market was turned upside down. Inventory of nitrile gloves—far and away the most popular—soon dropped as pricing rose substantially. Now, a year later, nitrile inventory is coming back, prices are coming down, and the amount of available gloves is working its way back to pre-pandemic levels.
When it comes to evaluating disposable gloves, thickness isn’t everything. The material they are made of, and whether they are industrial or exam grade, are also key factors in determining their appropriate applications.
But the question of how thick any particular glove is will always be an endless source of conversation—and often consternation—among those who buy disposable gloves, or sell them for a living.
Across the country, people are wondering if they will still be wearing face masks now that society has largely begun reopening. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that fully vaccinated Americans no longer have to cover their faces unless they are in a large crowd of strangers.
But are face mask requirements going away entirely? Not likely. It would be prudent to keep some on hand, at least through the summer and probably longer.
In talking with AMMEX customers over the last few weeks, a common pain point has emerged: their struggle with backorders.
An inconvenience even in the best of economic times, backorders of just about any consumer product you can name have become a major problem for wholesalers and retailers alike.
AMMEX periodically asks customers for feedback on our online portal.
You may have already heard from us, or you may hear from us soon. The following is a summary of three common questions and concerns we have received.
