COVID-19 provided an opportunity to rebuild CompanyWeek.com. What’s your plan?

For the CompanyWeek team, July feels like January. We’ve used the COVID-19 disruption to invest in both a redesign of CompanyWeek.com and a new supply-chain portal — SCoP. We launched our new site Monday, as the summer turned and as many companies look to the second half of 2020 as a new beginning. SCoP’s around the corner.

If the site is better — improved search, less clutter, better organization of our content, and with SCoP a fundamental realignment of how suppliers are sourced — our efforts are also a response to the shifting ground for U.S. manufacturing.

A common sentiment today is that COVID disruptions will translate to opportunity for domestic manufacturing. And to be sure, factors have aligned to favor U.S. production.

Yet for many companies, across multiple industries, shortening supply chains or locating domestic factories is more talk than reality. As much as we’d like, and despite the interests arrayed to bring back pharmaceutical and PPE manufacturing, many U.S. brands and buyers will fall back on trusted, cheaper suppliers in Asia.

The bar is even higher for other industries.

In a terrific expose on the challenges facing outdoor industry brands, Outside writer Christopher Solomon’s “How the Outdoor Industry Responded to Coronavirus” points out OI’s China addiction, one we’ve reported on for years: