I'm staring at a box and its contents, strewn across my working-from-home desk. The box says 'Wahl Salon Series 6000cc Lithium Powered Cordless Clipper'. Already I enjoy the look and feel of this appliance, light but with substance, quality metal blades, real screws through a solid case, no doubt with sturdy mechanics inside.
But I'm nervous. Sometime soon my beloved will take charge of the Wahl and give me a home haircut. She's never done such a thing before.
Last week I cancelled an actual haircut appointment. I'm sad that I've stripped income from my barber, but I was a little worried at this time about sharing and shedding body bits in a salon at close quarters.
But cancelling a haircut is not like cancelling a restaurant booking. Sausages at home also send you to bed with a full stomach. Absent the trip to the barber, however, my grey, thickly-present hair still grows and grows.
Hence, aside from books, I have made my first ever online purchase. And I have an excuse for some economic geography.
In 1911, Wahl Manufacturing kicked off in a little town called Sterling, on the Rock River, 170km west of Chicago, where the river discharges into Lake Michigan, in the heartland of America's Great Lakes manufacturing belt. Wahl is emblematic American. It launched the world's first electric hand clippers in 1919 and the first cordless clippers in 1967, and emerged as the world's foremost producer of hair care appliances.
The Wahl on my desk also has an Australian story, although a recent one. I purchased my gizmo from the retailer Shaver Shop. Shaver Shop launched on the share market in 2016 and grew quickly with more than 100 stores in shopping centres Australia wide, including Charlestown, Kotara and Green Hills. Plus, it runs an online platform. In the last 50 days, however, this virus has evacuated our shopping malls and Shaver Shop's walk-in customers have vanished. My Wahl was heavily discounted, a sign that Shaver Shop has stock that isn't rushing out of the warehouse. Shaver Shop shares have halved in value since mid-February.
What are the prospects for Wahl and Shaver Shop post-virus? Wahl will no doubt continue a decades-old fight against low-cost producers from China in a classic battle of quality versus price. Hipsters and beards, footy players and severe haircuts must be good for business. For Shaver Shop a quick return of foot traffic in the shopping malls is crucial.
But, post-virus, these firms will resume their confrontation with another global threat, the rollout of supply chain 4.0. In a 4.0 world, production takes place in fully-automated factories. Products move around the planet on ships and vehicles with minimal human presence. Automated warehouses package goods for direct home delivery. And last-mile delivery systems - a combination of cheap gig-economy workers and smart security systems like Amazon's Ring Video Doorbell - land the goods right onto your living room floor, even into your refrigerator, with no one at home. Conspiracy theorists might see the COVID19 lockdown as a shove towards global supply chain 4.0.
So I have two first-world worries. What will my head look like after my beloved wrestles this sleek machine across my bushy skull? And what will our world look like after the virus strips away another large chunk of the 20th century economy, its factories, shops, trucking firms and small warehouses, with more and more working from home, and more and more things purchased online while sitting at the kitchen table?
How might we value human contact in this new world? We know some things will never change. I may well continue to trust my beloved to cut my hair. But the reverse will never be true. Her salon visit involves more than scissors and tubs of colouring. Every one of the Hunter's 2500 hairdressers and beauticians offers the client a friendly ear, an emotional service, a trusty vault for storing stories about partners, friends, escapades, secret adventures, funny, sad, back-stabbing and heart-warming bits of life.
Things where human contact is essential, like hairdressing, will never be displaced by supply chain 4.0, but loads of other firms are vulnerable. Post-virus, how we spend our money will determine the winners and losers.
