US: Work shoes among ‘essential’ products for coronavirus effort
26/03/2020
It will continue shipments from its distribution centre in Ohio following the Ohio Department of Health issuing a “Stay at Home” order for all nonessential businesses from March 24 until April 6.
The warehouse has 1.3 million pairs of footwear in inventory.
Rocky Brands’ manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are under government orders to not operate for the next 14 days. These plants produce half of the company’s products, with the remainder being produced by contract manufacturers in other countries – primarily China – where manufacturing resumed at the end of February.
“We understand and appreciate efforts to flatten the COVID-19 curve and urge our fellow Ohioans to follow the order and take precautions for themselves and others around them,” said Jason Brooks, Rocky Brands CEO. “However, we agree with Ohio’s approach to permit distribution centres to continue to operate. This is especially important at this time for our distribution centre to operate as our footwear products are used by our country’s critical infrastructure businesses which need to be maintained during this crisis.
“This includes the military, police and fire and other first responders, farmers and ranchers, food and drug manufacturers, hospital workers, electric, gas and water utility companies, oil and gas producers, transportation and logistics businesses, and public works,” he added. “The Ohio order recognises we need workers in these types of businesses to remain on the job to enable us to fight the virus and protect our citizens at the same time.”
He added that the company has implemented policies to protect warehouse staff, including limiting contact, conducting daily health screenings, ongoing sanitisation of the entire facility and dividing employees into work teams who will work one week on and one week off.
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