Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Category Procurement Intelligence Report

Business practices within Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) market are heavily influenced by changing trends across the category as well as within the broader Clothing and Textiles market. Regulatory changes are taking place more frequently and the changes impact multiple functions within an organization. Alignment of procurement practices and decisions with all the new regulations has now become highly challenging, especially when category managers are responsible to centrally procure for multiple regions with different regulations.

Several structural changes including M&As and vertical integration efforts of suppliers are characterizing the broader market. Such strategic developments can erode the strength of previously established supplier relationships due to changed realities in the supplier's ecosystem. At the same time, buyers may also find opportunities to onboard new suppliers with a wider range of offerings or better contract terms for .

The global industry has seen a gradual increase in labor cost due to several factors, such as shortage of a trained workforce, increase in minimum wages, regulations around employee benefits and declining appeal for what have been traditionally called unskilled jobs. As the employee expenses increase, suppliers are compelled to pass some of this increase to their buyers by charging higher prices.

As a result, category managers need to closely monitor the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) procurement trends and identify changes required in their procurement environment for the category.

Sometimes, procurement functions are unable to timely alter their practices while responding to market conditions. Industry experts acknowledge that periodically reviewing procurement best practices and adopting learnings from across procurement categories can help procurement teams respond to market needs in a more agile way. This report combines our experience of other categories with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) procurement insights and hand picks best practices that can work for category managers delving in this market.

For example, Buyers should engage with suppliers that can repurchase the used products at fair market value or can offer recycling capability. This assists buyers to dispose of used products in a convenient manner and honor their sustainability practices. Also, suppliers provide credits to buyers for future purchases. This reduces overall procurement costs for buyers.

Buyers should proactively manage relations with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suppliers and have pre-determined intervention criteria for onboarding or replacing a supplier, changing specifications or terms and conditions.

Buyers need to evaluate the in-depth expertise of suppliers in the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) industry. This can be assessed by considering factors such as the years of experience, number of resources that have multi-year experience of working in the same industry and at least 3 to 5 credentials for the supplier.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) procurement. Some examples include: