Tandy Leather Announces 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders on June 2, 2020 - Seite 2

“After closing our stores, we made the very difficult decision to furlough nearly 70% of our workforce as we turned our focus to web fulfillment and conserving capital. I am extremely proud of the heroic efforts of our team, who worked grueling hours to reposition the business from fulfilling web orders out of over 100 stores to fulfilling hundreds of orders everyday out of our Fort Worth warehouse. This required a drastic and immediate change to our operating model – from the way we manage inventory, ship product, handle customer service and phone orders, to how we safely staff and operate under the new COVID-19 environment. Because of these efforts, I believe Tandy will come out of this crisis a much stronger company, and I look forward to recalling our furloughed employees as we reopen our stores,” said Carr.

Tandy Leather Factory has aggressively cut costs in the face of huge uncertainty over the duration and ongoing economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to protect liquidity, we have furloughed or laid off 395 employees, permanently closed 8 stores, reduced, abated or deferred rents, substantially cut discretionary spend that does not drive web sales, and taken significant executive and senior staff pay cuts. Because the Company’s ability to raise capital remains limited by the ongoing accounting restatements, Tandy Leather is taking every precaution to ensure the Company survives the pandemic while protecting long-term value for shareholders. As of April 30, the Company had no debt and $17.2 million of cash and cash equivalents. We own our flagship Fort Worth retail store, our corporate headquarters, and our manufacturing facility and distribution center on approximately 30 acres of land. We do not currently intend to borrow against this property.

As states and localities begin to lift shelter-in-place orders, we are carefully planning the re-opening of our stores where possible. Four of our stores are currently testing curbside pickup, our Fort Worth flagship store will open to customers this week in compliance with the guidance given by state and local authorities, and more store openings will phase-in over the coming weeks. In the meantime, our online sales have been robust. Total sales for April 2020 on a retail calendar were approximately $2.0-2.3 million, down about 60% from prior year.  Online sales for April this year were up about 200% over last year’s online sales, with virtually all of this year’s sales coming from the web channel.  With our Memorial Day sale now underway, May sales to-date are trending down about 40% to last year. We now have the ability to ship over 1,500 direct-to-consumer orders from our warehouse each day, and we are ramping up our digital and social marketing efforts to drive sales.