;

8th July 2002

Demand for the new Scout Publications has been encouraging since the Roadshows started in February. Reports have been favourable about the nature and quality of the range.

Until recently, Outdoors have kept pace with the requirements of all customers both large and small. Already, we have supplied over 215,000 new publications.

However in the past few weeks there has been a dramatic influx of several thousand new orders, which coincided with the end of June closing-date for receipt of the yellow priority order forms (and have extended the deadline to cover forms received to-date in July. This has created a challenge for the business. Over 3,000 orders were received last week alone.

Also due early high demand a small number of titles have been so popular that we have recently moved into a reprint situation. This is being attended to as swiftly as possible and we are working closely with the printers to reduce occasions when we are temporarily out of stock of any item.

Due to the previously expected level of demand and recognising the limited capacity of our own Lancing warehouse, a high volume of our stock is stored elsewhere and is then called-in to meet orders as space permits. Although on some occasions this might then show on our computers as "out of stock in the Lancing warehouse" this does not mean that these goods are totally "out of stock", but that they are "not stocked on the premises".

Every effort is being made to process and dispatch outstanding orders as quickly as possible. We have taken on extra temporary staff, and extended our operations into evening and weekend shifts to meet the demand. Our facility at Lancing is already at space capacity for the number of people who can work on the orders.

With all publications orders, we continue to operate on a strictly first-come first-served basis. We fully recognize the need for swift delivery and the need to be sensitive to expectations. We are giving the supply of publications priority over the other non-Scout merchandise deliveries to our shop network.

We would ask for your patience and understanding during this exceptional period when lead times for delivery on some orders could extend beyond the original specified 28 days from receipt of order to dispatch of goods from Lancing.

It would help us to concentrate on dealing with the backlog if progress-enquiries could be restricted to those that have genuinely strayed beyond the month, after taking account of postal delivery times to and from Lancing. This will then permit greater use of our resources to process, pick and dispatch orders.

In the meantime, I can assure you that we are doing our best to give support to these exciting developments with Scouting's new programme.

David Markwell
Managing Director