HOW 19 SMALL BUSINESSES ARE RESPONDING TO - THE PIVOT POINT - COVID-19 - Elon University
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THE PIVOT POINT
HOW 19 SMALL
BUSINESSES ARE
RESPONDING TO
COVID-19
By Trends
INDEX of stories:
1. Restaurant: Fusian — a fast-casual sushi chain based in Ohio — has
pivoted to grocery delivery amidst mandatory restaurant closures.
2. Furniture: Deskmate — a London-based portable standing desk
company — is sourcing new suppliers to meet rising demand for its product
as people are forced to WFH.
3. Printing: Everest Direct Mail and Marketing — a print shop that
offers integrated direct mail marketing services — is trimming operational
expenses, shifting future investments, and “collaborating down the line”
with suppliers to help weather the storm.
4. Catering: Topnotch Events
New York City — has seen business completely dry up and decided to make
a hard pivot towards a longtime passion: teaching theatre to kids.
5. Pets: Pets in the City — a pet care company based in West Los Angeles
— is adjusting to social distancing measures by experimenting with virtual
dog training and digital content.
6. Microbrewery: Gloucester Brewing Company — a small-town
microbrewery specializing in ales — closed their taproom and switched to
7. Marketing: Scout Collective — a brand strategy and digital marketing
studio — is helping clients get the most impact from their marketing dollars
by crafting messages around loyalty, community, and empathy.
8. Events: SnapBar — a custom photo and video booth rental company
— is trying to navigate widespread event cancellations by repurposing its
existing resources to launch new products.
9. Cleaning: Hip Maids — an on-demand cleaning service — is having
workers to stay at home.
10. Beauty: The Sparkle Bar — a makeup and beauty studio — is
transitioning to “tele-cosmetics” as social distancing is keeping customers
away.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 2
11. Manufacturing: Get It Made
supply chain.
12. Newsletter: Intelligent Prepper — a weekly newsletter chronicling
threats including everything from riots to volcanoes — has become a
useful coronavirus resource while also keeping a long view into the type of
content that an audience will want when this crisis passes.
13. Foodware: Final — a reusable foodware company that makes collapsible
straws -- was preparing to launch a reusable fork. But as the consumer
landscape shifted sharply, the company decided to launch a Kickstarter
campaign for much-needed reusable sanitizing wipes. (Sign me up for a box...)
14. Family Club: The Lane — a social club for kids and their families — opened
and avoid layoffs.
15. Nursing: Next Move — an agency that places travel nurses — has been
rapidly hiring administrative staff to keep up with demand for its services.
16. Veterinarian: Pawzy — a search tool that connects people to vets in their
area -- launched a telehealth alternative as its physical location was seeing
(See our Signal below on telemedicine.)
17. College Education: Knack — a peer-to-peer tutoring platform — typically
works with students in-person. But with social distancing measures,
the company is promoting its online-only features and giving away its
technology to impacted colleges that were forced to close their in-person
tutoring centers.
18. Sport Beverages: LIFEAID Beverage Company — a beverage business
that makes functional sports drinks for athletes — lost one of its biggest
distribution channels with the closure of gyms. But a surge in sales from
them weather the storm. (We’ll drink to that!)
19. Transportation: Swoop — an event transportation app — saw its business
evaporate overnight and is pivoting to develop a business management app
for its operators.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 3
A Reusable Foodware Company
Pivots to Wipes
> The business: A reusable foodware company that makes collapsible straws;
before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the company was about to launch a travel
fork.
> The challenge: Stay relevant (and afloat) despite declining sales and delaying
fork launch date.
> The solution: Pivot to producing reusable sanitizing wipes.
Emma Rose Cohen and her
team at Final were gearing up
to launch a reusable travel fork
on Earth Day. After experiencing
some supply chain issues in
January as China went on
coronavirus lockdown, they were
able to get the forks made.
But as COVID-19 turned into
a global pandemic, Cohen
decided to hold back the launch
and make a big pivot -- to
reusable sanitizing wipes. Her
team quickly spec’d out designs
and launched a Kickstarter for
The team at Final FinalWipe, which went live on
March 30.
If they raise $50K, they’ll start making the wipes, which they aim to start shipping to
customers in late July.
The wipes are made from bamboo and antimicrobial silver. The home set goes for $25
and comes in a baby wipe-like container: You add a sanitizing tablet to the rag-like wipes
and, after use, throw them in the laundry and use them over and over with new tablets.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 4
They’re also making travel wipes,
equipped with a compartment
for clean wipes, one for dirty
wipes, and a spray bottle full of
sanitizing solution. These go for
$20.
“I make things I would use that
solve problems for me,” Cohen
says, recalling a recent trip to
Target where she used about
20 disposable wipes. “I’ve gone
through two cases of wipes in the
Seeing a need for low-waste sanitization solutions, Final last two weeks.”
quickly prototyped reusable wipes.
Speaking of Target, Final would love to sign them up as a retailer. But they’re focusing on
direct-to-consumer sales and are building hype for the wipe on Instagram and Twitter.
While the virus has inspired a new product, Cohen says it was tough to put a pause on the
fork. “It’s all I’ve been thinking, breathing, dreaming of for the past year and a half.”
They’ve also seen sales of the FinalStraw, their original product, drastically decline. “As a
company that sells travel straws, the lack of travel has made a big impact,” Cohen says.
Final did $5m in revenue last year, their first year in business, and expected to at least
double that in 2020. Cohen says they’ve seen business drop by 70%; and it’s continuing to
decline every day.
To complicate things further, their third-party logistics partner is only shipping out essential
goods, so straw shipping operations have moved into employees’ homes.
In a moment when utmost sanitization could be the difference between life and death, the
case for reusables may not be so compelling. But with the current shortage of single-use
wipes, FinalWipe solves a problem and meets a need -- right now and in the future, when
people (hopefully) turn some focus back to reducing waste.
Cohen says her company grew from the belief that every individual has the power to make
change and that her team feels compelled to step up in this moment.
“It’s all hands on deck,” she says. They’re putting minimal resources toward straws and
working like crazy to make FinalWipe a thing. Staff cuts aren’t something she’s thinking
about. “If we’re going down, we’re going down together.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 5
A Social Club for Families Pivots to
Virtual Services
> The business: The Lane, a social club for kids and their families
> The challenge: The pandemic shut down the space only a month after it
opened
> The solution: Quickly launch a virtual version of the business to support the staff
Whiplash
That’s the sensation Rachel Lubin had after watching the business she co-founded finally
open after a year and a half of work -- only to shut its doors in the face of a global
pandemic a month later.
The Lane, in Washington, DC, welcomed its first families right around Valentine’s Day. It was
a hit from the start -- Lubin and her co-founder, Molly Nizhnikov, say they saw 700+ visitors
in a single day on opening weekend.
Why so popular? It could be because The Lane fills a unique niche -- it’s a social club that
caters to kids and their parents alike. The name is inspired by the founders’ children -- they
have 2 daughters each (Lucy, Annie, Nora, Ella).
As Lubin puts it, most kid-friendly establishments in the US “really put parents on the
sideline” and don’t even give them a place to sit: “There is no food or drink here,” she says,
and “it all kind of smells like feet.”
The Lane’s business model focuses on creating a better experience for everyone.
Think pizza and grilled cheese for the little ones, plus coffee, breakfast sandwiches,
smoothies, beer, and wine for the grown-ups. All housed in an ~8k sq. ft. facility with tons of
space to play, party, and unwind. Not to mention a ball pit, a climbing wall, slides, and an
astroturfed area with Lincoln Logs and Legos.
The staff of 17 doesn’t care if your kid makes a mess. That’s almost the point.
Lubin and Nizhnikov poured in $2.5m to start the business, using a mix of their own funds,
an SBA loan, and investment dollars (including money from family and friends). They
expected to do $2m in revenue in the first year, and to break even by the fall. Memberships
start at $95/month -- right now, the business has between 350 and 400 of them.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 6
Other revenue comes from drop-in visits, private events, classes, food and drink sales, and
a small amount of retail (educational toys and t-shirts).
Lubin declined to share exact revenue numbers, but said they had “exceeded expectations”
in the first month.
Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. At 6pm on March 14th -- exactly a month after
opening weekend -- the business closed its doors. And they can’t predict how much
business they’ll end up losing.
Nizhnikov said many of the business’s partners and vendors have been “absolutely
amazing” under the circumstances -- except for their landlord. “They’re the only ones so
far that we’ve talked to that have been like, I’m not going to show one degree of empathy,”
she said.
Still, Lubin acknowledged that The Lane is luckier than some businesses, because it has
a discounted rent for its 1st year of operation (the full amount is $39 per square foot, plus
operating costs). So come April 1, the burden doesn’t weigh as heavily as it would on the
restaurants down the street.
To ease the financial blow, Lubin and Nizhnikov quickly spun up a virtual version of The
Lane (dubbed The Lane Anti-Social Club). It’s got virtual art and science classes, story
time, and other events. There’s even a Slack channel -- #conveneduringcovid -- a place to
“chat, share ideas, vent, laugh, whatever it takes to survive this.”
Virtual programming was part of the long-term plan, Nizhnikov said. But now it’s an
immediate priority -- and something the founders hope will help their staff, who need to
make ends meet.
One bright spot of the pivot to online offerings: The workers and the virtual community get
to show off their array of talents: There was a trained actor who led a drama class, and a
snake expert who answered questions for half an hour with her boa constrictor wrapped
around her neck.
“I can get to see these people shine in a totally different way,” Lubin says.
Other ideas The Lane is thinking about to strengthen its virtual presence: Activities to
engage kids in this time of crisis. While they’re cooped up with their little ones, parents are
looking for any minute they can find, so The Lane is creating activity packets to educate
and entertain.
“It’s not going to keep the business open, it’s not going to be the thing that makes us
successful financially,” Lubin says. “But it is certainly going to be the thing that keeps us
going and keeps our communities together and keeps us sort of feeling alive.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 7
This Travel Nursing Agency Can’t
Fill Requests Fast Enough
> The business: Next Move, an agency that places travel nurses
> The challenge: Keeping up with incoming requests for nurses
> The solution: Hire more administrative staff
Hospitals across America are
staffing up on nurses to treat
COVID-19 patients, which has
been a boon to Next Move,
a one-year-old travel nurse
placement agency.
Here’s how the agency works: A
hospital puts out a request for
a nurse, typically for a 3-month
contract; Next Move hires the
nurse as a W2 employee and
negotiates pay with the nurse
and with the hospital, taking a
margin off the top.
Next Move had an aggressive 2020 growth plan at the start of the year, says founder John
Nolan. They were aiming for $8.5m in revenue. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, he
now expects to do $13m to $14m this year.
Nolan says week-to-week revenue jumped 35% between March and April. They currently
have 300-500 open work orders and have seen as many new requests from states across
the country as they’ve seen in their core states: Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas, and Oklahoma.
He has a team of 6 and plans to hire 4 more staff to keep up with the requests.
“We’re trying to look at this as not an opportunity to profit, but as an opportunity to really
support our clients” and provide solutions, Nolan says.
A big question on Next Move’s nurses’ minds: What happens if I get sick and can’t work?
Hospitals only pay for hours worked, so Nolan is reserving the extra money coming in as
sick pay for nurses who end up in quarantine.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 8
Next Move has also spent time sourcing personal protective equipment and has asked
nurses to let them know if shortages exist in their hospitals.
Nolan says many nurses have been reaching out to Next Move, asking where they can
be most helpful. When nurses are eager to take on crisis contracts in New York and
Washington, Nolan is quick to level with them.
“There’s no way to comprehend what it’s like to go to work for 18 hours and have all your
patients die, not be able to take any breaks, be way understaffed, and not have enough
protection equipment,” he says. He shares what he hears so nurses know what it’s like
before jumping in.
Nolan says his client hospitals in the Midwest seem to be in pretty good shape. They’ve
had the benefit of time -- to see what’s happening on the coasts, staff up on nurses, and
postpone elective procedures. Patient numbers at some of his client hospitals are so low at
the moment that some nurses are concerned their contracts will be canceled.
Nolan doesn’t expect that to happen, explaining that this is the calm before the storm. He
encourages them to relax, enjoy some rest, and to breathe -- “because it’s not going to be
like that 4 weeks from now.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 9
A Vet Clinic Finder Storms an
Empty Telehealth Market
> The business: Pawzy, a search tool that connects people to vets in their area
> The challenge: Foot traffic to vets is plummeting
> The solution: Launch a pet telehealth service
Kerri-Lynn McAllister had not
even fully launched her company
when she decided to throw
out its core focus. McAllister,
a former marketing chief at
the personal finance website
Ratehub, has spent the last 6
months building a vet clinic
finder for her company Pawzy.
She has two dogs of her own,
and after shuttling between
a smorgasbord of clinics, she
realized that the world needed
an easier way to locate vets.
Her idea: Aggregate them into a
search tool.
Pawzy has existed since October
2019 with a few low-key services,
like a “breed selector” that
analyzes a person’s desires in
a pet and spits out which dog
breed is most ideal. She hired
Kerri-Lynn McAllister cites her two dogs as the inspiration for one employee and 6 contractors,
Pawzy. and set up a co-working space
in Toronto.
Throughout the company’s life, McAllister has been trialling her clinic finder idea. But as
she was nearing the launch of the clinic, COVID-19 hit. McAllister realized that the tool she
had poured months of time into was functionally useless. No one wants to go to the vet
right now -- not unless they absolutely have to.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 10“I was like, ‘Everyone is going to move virtual first. I need to come up with a solution with
petcare and some vet clinics that would allow them to connect virtually,’” she says.
It’s obvious that telehealth -- for people -- is booming. But McAllister, who had already
built out the website and corporate infrastructure for a pet company, asked herself: What
about the pets?
There are very few companies that connect vets to clients virtually -- AirVet comes closest,
followed by the subscription chat service Fuzzy Pet Health -- and vets don’t always seem
to be using them. As more people are sheltering in space, vets have seen their in-person
clientele drop off, and many are turning to platforms like FaceTime for help.
Yet FaceTime isn’t designed for medical professionals, and it can’t reproduce many of the
essential features of a vet office, like a waiting room. Basically, there’s a giant hole in the
market.
McAllister saw her opportunity. She reached out to vet organizations across Canada and
national regulatory bodies, and she decided that Pawzy would sell video-conferencing
software that knits together vets and pet owners. She already had most of the search
infrastructure -- but instead of in-person clinics, she is rewriting her code to connect
people to vets who are available remotely.
In its final version, Pawzy will offer all sorts of features for managing virtual foot traffic.
“You have a virtual waiting room, you can manage your patient queue, you can collect
payments, send files, take pictures for your medical records on the spot,” says McAllister.
She’s already partnered with 3 vets in the Toronto area, but as more of her country goes
into lockdown, McAllister expects that demand for the service could take off.
A few months ago, few people were thinking seriously about pet telehealth. But as demand
looks to balloon, Pawzy is ready for its breakout moment.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 11As Colleges Shift to Online
Learning, What Happens to
Face-to-Face Tutoring?
> The business: Knack, a peer-to-peer tutoring platform
> The challenge: Colleges have moved classes online, requiring a shift in focus for
a tutoring platform that relies on human interaction
> The solution: Promoting its online-only feature, giving away its technology to
impacted colleges that were forced to close their in-person campus tutoring centers
Samyr Qureshi and Dennis
Hansen built a business based
on human contact. Knack, a
peer-to-peer tutoring platform
that helps universities increase
their student success rates, has
largely focused on building
a meaningful professional
relationship between tutors and
students.
With the vast majority of colleges
shutting down in-person classes
and moving online due to the
rapid spread of COVID-19,
the Knack team was thrown a
The Knack team (left to right): Shawn Doyle, David
Stoker, Samyr Qureshi, and Dennis Hansen
curveball.
To top it off, the coronavirus pandemic hit just as Knack was getting into a groove. Qureshi
and Hansen were recently awarded Forbes 30 Under 30 awards, the team just moved into
their first real headquarters, and the company had been experiencing substantial growth
in new users and university partnerships (since its launch in 2016, the company has sold its
product to more than 50 colleges and universities).
With several active contracts with major university partners, including the University of
Florida and Johns Hopkins University, Knack needed to find a way to continue delivering
value for its partner institutions and their students.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 12The Knack app connects vetted tutors with students, similar to how most other peer-
to-peer apps such as Lyft and Uber operate. When colleges required students to leave
campus, and many states issued orders to shelter in place, the local geographies of
Knack’s partner campuses were scrambled.
Thankfully for Knack, they weren’t forced into an overnight hackathon to create a video-
chatting feature or other solution: they already had one. “The way we built Knack, we
wanted to give students the ability to connect both in person and virtually,” Qureshi told us.
“We don’t solely rely on in-person -- it’s always been 50/50, and now almost overnight it’s
become 100% online.”
Knack also launched an initiative offering any university or tutoring center the ability to
move their tutoring service online for free using Knack while their in-person centers are
closed.
Knack’s coronavirus initiative aims to help universities do two things:
1. Repurpose their employed tutors by extending their reach for online and on-campus
support.
2. Empower their top-performing students to become Knack tutors as well, but in a
contract role, giving students a means of earning part-time income without requiring
the university to increase any faculty overhead.
As popular income streams for students have been cut off as a result of the closure of
many service businesses, Knack has provided a lifeline. “We are creating jobs when
students need it most,” Qureshi says.
And more students than ever are using its platform. Last week, Knack’s user engagement
grew some 50%, Qureshi says. “That interpersonal interaction between students is even
more important as classes shift online,” Qureshi says.
Knack has raised $2m from corporate venture funds, nonprofits, educational institutions,
and super angels.And it has expanded its partners beyond colleges and universities. The
company built a training program in partnership with the College Reading & Learning
Association, which describes what it takes to be an effective tutor and how to make best
use of the platform.
Co-founder Dennis Hansen says Knack is seeing more colleges encourage this type
of training. “It helps students connect the dots between the act of tutoring and how to
effectively teach and connect with individuals in an academically rooted social learning
interaction,” he told us.
It’s especially important now, as thousands of students have been displaced from their
brick-and-mortar campuses, placing their academic success in jeopardy. By offering
students direct connection to learning through interpersonal interaction with a tutor,
students are able to maintain a critical advantage in their academic journeys.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 13Beverage company plows
unexpected profits back into gyms
that helped it grow
> The business: LIFEAID Beverage Company, a beverage business that makes
functional sports drinks for athletes
> The challenge: Gyms, an important distribution channel for LIFEAID’s
beverages, are closed due to the coronavirus
> The solution: LIFEAID is reinvesting profits from its successful distribution
channels into its struggling retail partners
LIFEAID’s non-traditional
approach to building its
beverage business would likely
have failed without the support
of a loyal community of partner
gyms that pushed the company’s
products in its early years.
But now, in a period of crisis
where many gyms have had
to close their doors, those
same partner gyms are
leaning on LIFEAID to survive
-- and providing an example
of the value of investing in a
community.
LIFEAID co-founder Aaron Hinde displays the company’s 6
different nutritional blends Back in 2009, the company’s co-
(via LIFEAID)
founders Aaron Hinde and Orion
Melehan met in a CrossFit gym
in Santa Cruz, California, and bonded over a shared frustration with the lack of healthy
beverage options for athletes.
So in 2011, Hinde and Melehan -- a sports chiropractor and a financial planner,
respectively -- pooled their life savings together and launched a beverage company
dedicated to making healthier alternatives for athletes.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 14Since neither had any background in the beverage business, they took a non-traditional
approach to launching their beverage line.
“We were really founded out of ignorant compassion,” Hinde explained to Trends.
Most beverage companies launch their products by selling their drinks in stores, starting
out with small local markets and building up to large national chains like Whole Foods.
But LIFEAID took an entirely different approach.
Against recommendations from beverage industry professionals, LIFEAID skipped stores
entirely and instead chose to sell its beverages:
1. Online, directly to consumers, and
2. At CrossFit gyms
The strategy allowed the co-founders to do what they did best: Melehan, the financial
planner, developed a scalable model for online sales; Hinde, the sports chiropractor and
nutritionist, developed partnerships with local gyms to sell directly to their target customers.
The strategy worked. During its first 5 years, the company grew between 30% and 40%
annually by selling its drinks directly to consumers online and directly to gyms, chiropractic
offices, and physical therapy offices.
But, by remaining disciplined (Hinde told us the company has always been “very tight”
with its burn rate and has nearly broken even most years to sustain its continued growth),
LIFEAID ultimately succeeded in partnering with large retailers including Whole Foods,
Sprouts Farmers Market, Kroger, Walmart, Safeway, and The Vitamin Shoppe.
By the start of this year, the company -- which is still independently owned by Hinde and
Melehan -- was on track to do $50m in sales.
But then the pandemic hit, leading to the closure of nearly all of LIFEAID’s partner gyms --
which, at the time, represented 35-40% of the company’s revenue.
But since LIFEAID had cultivated a variety of distribution channels, it absorbed the
disruption by leaning heavily on its online and grocery-store sales.
“In our Amazon business, we had the #1 and #2 products in our category,” Hinde says. The
company also had record weeks at Walmart, Whole Foods, and Kroger -- leading it to run
out of stock of some of its drinks.
Hinde is plowing those unexpected profits into its gym partners that have been hard hit by
the pandemic.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 15LIFEAID recently introduced a new program prompting customers to enter their gym’s
unique code when ordering online. Hinde then forwards $15 of each sale (more than 25%
of the price of a $59.76 12-pack of LIFEAID) to those gym owners to help them survive the
pandemic.
Even though LIFEAID will lose money on the program, Hinde says he feels it’s more
important than ever to support his partner gyms.
For one thing, Hinde wants to make sure that his partners survive the downturn because
they make up a crucial part of his business. But it’s also a matter of principle.
The way he sees it, his partner gyms and the members of his community were the reason
LIFEAID was able to succeed in the first place. And now that those same partners are
struggling, it’s his job to do whatever he can to help them.
“Those are the people who got us here,” Hinde says. “And when we get past this, people
are going to remember who did what during this time.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 16Event transportation startup shifts
focus to app development
> The business: Swoop, an event transportation app
> The challenge: Bookings are basically nonexistent
> The solution: Use the time to develop a business management app for their
operators
“You can argue that we are in
the worst business right now,”
says Swoop co-founder Ruben
Schultz. Swoop is an event
transportation startup with a
team of 11.
Their main markets are big cities
-- NY, LA, SF, etc. Before the
COVID-19 outbreak, they used
to do a couple hundred rides
during an average weekend --
transporting guests to weddings,
colleagues to events, and friends
Friends renting a Swoop party bus to get to wine country to wine country.
As you can imagine, they’re now booking about zero rides, save the occasional trip to
the airport or hospital. And when drivers do go out, Schultz says they clean every vehicle
before and after every ride and wear gloves.
Swoop is open to providing any type of transportation that’s needed at the moment
-- like delivering takeout -- but Schultz thinks UberEats and Postmates probably have
that market covered. Despite almost non-existent sales, you could argue Swoop is in an
enviable position. They don’t own the vehicles their customers book and were in a month-
to-month lease at a co-working space, which they quickly moved out of, with the help of
Schultz’s uncle’s truck.
Swoop has been building a business management app for their mom-and-pop operators
-- i.e., the drivers and driving companies they partner with. Schultz sees this as an
opportunity for his team to put their heads down, dive into user research, and develop the
product, without the usual distractions.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 17They haven’t laid off any employees and don’t plan to. Schultz says Swoop has enough
money in the bank to continue on without bookings for a year to 18 months. This isn’t the
case for Swoop’s operators; most have had to lay off their drivers.
While Swoop is faring well, all things considered, COVID-19 has caused cash flow pain.
They refunded cancellations outside their typical policy and paid back deposits -- money
they had already allocated for other purposes.
Schultz says he’s looking closely at how the virus could impact travel and group events in
the long term -- but that it’s too soon to make any meaningful predictions.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 18One Restaurateur Has a Pitch: To
Stay Afloat, Become a Grocer
> The business: Fusian, a fast-casual sushi chain based in Ohio
> The challenge: Surviving through mandatory restaurant closures
> The solution: Become a grocer
To understand how
Stephan Harman pivoted
a sushi restaurant shut
down by COVID-19 into
a part-time grocery
delivery service in a
matter of days, you have
to understand a quirk of
the supply chain.
Bars and restaurants
source their produce
from different suppliers
than grocery stores, in
part because the two
have such different
needs. While grocery
stores want “single-
Stephan Harman (center) and his two business partners, Josh Weprin
(left) and Zach Weprin (right), have pivoted from restaurant owners to wrap” items they can
grocers to save hundreds of employees’ jobs (via Harman) sell directly to customers
-- a wrapped rotisserie
chicken, for instance -- restaurants just need a whole jumble of ingredients they can cook.
Grocery stores are always buying up half-gallon canisters of milk, but a restaurant will
almost never need milk in such small quantities.
When the state of Ohio announced on March 15 that all restaurants had to shut down
until further notice, Harman -- who has co-run Fusian, a fast-casual sushi chain with 10
locations across Ohio since 2010 -- described it as a shock to the system. “This wasn’t a
dimmer switch, this was a light switch,” he said.
Though Harman had followed the news of the coronavirus with a “steady back-of-the-
mind anxiety,” he had little sense that a full shutdown of restaurants would reach Ohio so
quickly.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 19“In the last month, we were on trend to have our best month in company history,” Harman
said. “We scrambled really quickly to figure out how to stay in business.”
Harman employs around 200 people across the state. Most of them are paid on an hourly
basis, so while he has yet to lay anyone off, he has already had to cut hours. Harman also
has rent payments due, and he’s tried to negotiate with his landlords -- so far without luck
-- to get some kind of relief or, at the very least, a restructuring of payment. In many of the
shopping centers where Fusian is located, it is one of the only businesses still in operation.
But last week, after Harman had waited 4 full days to receive an online delivery from his
food supplier in Dayton, Ohio, he thought back to that strange quirk of the produce supply
chain. He had a realization: The supply chain to grocery stores might be slow right now
as people panic buy, but the grocery supply chain isn’t the only one that sources fresh
produce. Bars and restaurants can do the same. And with so many restaurants temporarily
shuttered across Ohio, Harman’s suppliers had an excess of goods.
Harman called up his 2 business partners, and within hours, they were setting up a special
offer. Along with sushi, Fusian would deliver groceries to customers within an 8- to 10-mile
radius. The decision to add groceries was as simple as logging a series of new items --
rice, onions, potatoes, almond milk, and so on -- into Fusian’s pre-existing e-commerce
portal. But it has revolutionized business.
Harman reports a rush of orders for certain goods -- like organic tofu -- that Fusian can
easily access but that most nearby groceries no longer keep in stock. As of now, all 10
Fusian stores are offering groceries alongside sushi and -- another new addition -- Blue-
Apron-style meal kits. In the past week, sales through Fusian’s online ordering platform
have grown 400%. To meet demand, Harman is already shifting his team members toward
delivery services.
Harman’s pivot to become a grocer may be what keeps his entire business afloat.
“We feel this is a real opportunity for us to get into more homes for people who would
never eat at our restaurant in the first place,” he told Trends. “I think we’ll look back on this
as the thing that saved our brand.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 20In a Twist of Fate, a Standing Desk
Company Finds Product-Market Fit
> The business: Deskmate, a London-based portable standing desk company
> The problem: Supply chain issues, partly due to COVID-19, are making it hard to
scale production
> The solution: Find a stable source of raw materials and expand production
operations and output to meet increased demand
Last month co-founders Ashley
Lockwood and Arthur Maisonnier
were in agreement: If they found
a buyer, they’d sell Deskmate.
The standing desk company’s
production and fulfillment centers
went out of business in January,
which left them unable to ship
product for about a month. They
were hemorrhaging cash and
almost shut down the business.
An offer came in, but the buyer
backed out in mid-February due to
market instability; so the founders
rolled up their sleeves and pushed
forward. Lockwood says he’s
happy they stuck with it. While
COVID-19 has dismantled many
industries, Lockwood finds his
desks in unprecedented demand
as companies around the globe
Ashley Lockwood, of the London-based standing desk direct their people to work from
company, Deskmate (via Lockwood)
home.
Deskmate’s portable standing desks start at £30 and are designed for quick setup and
temporary use on top of a regular desk. They’re easy to fold up and stash away -- a
handy, inexpensive tool for those who find themselves working from home without a
particularly ergonomic setup.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 21The London-based company has been around since 2017 and was inspired by the
founders’ inability to find inexpensive standing desks for their co-working space. Lockwood
says the market has been up and down. They’ve had trouble gaining organic traction, until
now.
Deskmate started seeing increased demand in late February and did more sales between
March 16 and 18 than in the prior 3 months combined. They’re seeing an uptick in sales
across Europe, especially in Italy and Spain -- two countries hit hard by COVID-19. They
also have a strong foothold in the US and are trying to partner with an American or
Canadian production facility.
But they’re running out of stock quickly and face supply chain challenges. The French
cardboard they’ve used in the past is now 5X more expensive, so they’ve switched to a
UK supplier and are testing out new production facilities. With limited hours and staffing,
production costs have gone up.
They see these next 3 months as a crucial window to gain customers, as many will be
working from home. “We’re all guns blazing, trying to get as many made as we can,”
Lockwood says. They’re receiving rave reviews from customers and are in talks with big
companies looking to outfit hundreds of employees. “We need to be producing thousands
of these,” he says.
If Lockwood can continue making desks -- and do so quickly -- he predicts closing 20X the
sales they would have closed without the pandemic. He’s also looking to add a marketing
assistant and B2B salesperson to his team of 2.
Lockwood sums this all up well: “In a very strange flip of luck, we’ve found product-market
fit.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 22Many hands make a factory work.
Here’s how this one plans to
stay open
> The business: Everest Direct Mail and Marketing, a print shop that offers
integrated direct mail marketing services
> The challenge: There’s a shortage of laborers who are willing to work in the
close quarters of a printing factory
> The solution: Cutting costs by trimming operational expenses, shifting future
investments, and “collaborating down the line” with suppliers to weather the storm
together
Maddison Lake launched a direct
mail marketing service, designed to
help attorneys acquire new clients
using printed mail campaigns, in
2014.
From the start, Lake did everything
he could to drive the business’ costs
down, including developing his
own print shop to reduce printing
costs and streamline operations.
Unlike most competitors who ran
their printing presses 12 hours a
Members of the Everest Direct Mail and Marketing team day, his North Carolina-based
advertise their company in a warehouse before the
coronavirus crisis (via EverstDMM) business ran its presses 24/7.
Once he had lowered his costs, Lake began to pitch his competitive direct mail marketing
service -- which he named Everest Direct Mail and Marketing -- to other industries.
Soon, Everest had attracted clients across the real estate, dental, medical, landscaping,
entertainment, and nearly a dozen other industries. The company attracted larger clients
by offering SaaS integrations that piped the results of its customers’ direct mail marketing
campaigns directly into their Salesforce dashboards.
But as the company grew, it stayed true to its early cost-conscious roots: Everest’s
employees -- who now number more than 170 people -- worked in 3 shifts in order to keep
the presses running 24 hours a day.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 23Just 6 years after signing its first client, Everest forecast $18m in annual revenue this year
thanks to its employees’ constant cranking.
But despite several years of explosive growth, Everest had to lower its forecast last week.
Now, the company expects a sales decrease of between 10% and as much as 50% over the
next 6 months.
So, what exactly is causing the company’s notoriously never-ceasing presses to slow down?
Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with diminished demand (Luck says that companies are
still willing to advertise by mail during the coronavirus pandemic) or an interrupted supply
chain (after all, paper is one of the company’s few real inputs).
Instead, the cause of Everest’s problems is an even more important internal resource:
labor. Lake told Trends that, ever since the state of North Carolina announced the closure
of dine-in bars and restaurants, he simply can’t convince enough of his factory employees
to come to work each day for fear of contracting the coronavirus.
So even though demand for printed mailers is still strong so far (although Lake anticipates
demand to drop off soon as more of his clients grapple with their own business issues),
Everest’s main challenge right now is keeping enough employees on the factory floor.
Everest hired a high-end cleaning service to come in every morning and sanitize the entire
factory from top to bottom, mostly to provide peace of mind for employees (Lake told us
that the facilities are already safe and that the company follows recommended safety
protocols). But since the company expects its labor and cash flow problems to continue for
at least the next several months, Lake has developed a long-term strategy to ensure the
business survives the corona-chaos.
It involves:
1. Trimming the fat on company costs. The company has already implemented a hiring
freeze (despite plans to add 35 new employees in upcoming weeks) and plans to
take other measures to cut costs -- hopefully, without laying off workers.
2. Overhauling investment strategy by using money that had been earmarked for
future infrastructure investments (printer upgrades, etc.) as an emergency fund. Lake
told us that Everest is in a better position than competitors who overinvested in
infrastructure that they may no longer be able to pay off.
3. Forming partnerships that create breathing room up and down the supply chain.
Lake is offering Everest’s customers discounts (he told us he’s basically selling at cost)
and also asking his suppliers for credit extensions that will allow for repayment in 90
days instead of the standard 3 to 4 weeks. The way Lake sees it, the whole supply
chain needs to survive for his business to survive.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 24For Lake, taking care of the 170 or so employees that rely on his business to put food on
their tables is a top priority. But Lake is also concerned that many of his clients will also
go out of business before the crisis is over. He says he’s already seen a client lay off 65
employees and suspend operations, and he’s particularly concerned about clients in the
entertainment industry going under.
In addition to offering discounts to his clients, Lake is also asking for discounts from his
creditors -- and he recognizes that those vendors, in turn, will also likely have to do the
same to keep business moving.
He thinks it’s more likely that all of the different businesses up and down the industry will
survive if they offer each other those types of discounts in the short term.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 25An Events Planner Goes Home to
Broadway
> The business: Topnotch Events, a catering and staffing company based in
New York City
> The challenge: No one is scheduling large events right now
> The solution: A hard pivot to a longtime passion -- teaching theater to kids
When Harley Yanoff’s events
company received its first
cancellation on March 1st, he didn’t
think much of it. He knew about the
ballooning risks of the coronavirus,
but at most he budgeted for a
few corporate clients to back out.
By that point, SXSW was still a
full week away from shuttering,
and Yanoff had a slate of private
dinners and weddings lined up
for April and May -- his busiest
months of the year. He thought,
“Nobody’s going to cancel their
weddings.”
In better times, gig workers at Topnotch catered events
with tens of thousands of guests. (via Harley Yanoff)
Then, within a few days, the emails
rushed in. Everyone started pulling
out. “It just started dropping and dropping and dropping,” Yanoff said. Whereas last April
and May, Yanoff’s company Topnotch organized over 100 events per month, today he has
exactly zero left on the docket.
By some measures, Yanoff is lucky: He doesn’t have a physical office space to pay monthly
rent, and although he regularly employs a pool of around 300 gig workers, he only has
one salaried employee -- a VP of operations. But the future of Topnotch is looking bleak.
Many of his workers, most of whom were pursuing other careers and who split their
time between a medley of companies, have already left New York City in the wake of the
COVID-19 outbreak. And Yanoff has no idea when the events business will rev up again --
or when it does, what it will look like.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 26“My days have been spent trying to figure out something within this industry that is going
to be useful right now,” Yanoff said. At one point, he considered food delivery -- then
realized companies like GrubHub and UberEats already have that market cornered.
The events business itself appears more volatile than ever. Yanoff has started asking
himself, “Are there going to be the same number of events, or are people now going to
realize there are a lot of things they can do from home? I don’t know.”
What all this means is that Yanoff is pivoting back to the basics. The reason he got
into events in the first place is acting. Twelve years ago, as a theater arts major in
Massachusetts, Yanoff launched a summer acting camp for kids. The camp taught him
the logistics of organizing large groups of people. When he moved from Massachusetts to
New York City to pursue acting professionally, he gravitated toward events -- first as a gig
worker himself, a bartender-for-hire, and then as the owner of Topnotch.
After all of these years, even as Yanoff booked lucrative 10k-person trade shows, he kept
up the summer camp as a side hobby. Last week, he hit on an idea: Broadway from Home.
With so many kids out of school, they needed something to do -- and Yanoff realized he
could build an online workshop where kids read and practice musicals from their rooms.
He mined his camp email list to broadcast the opportunity, and within 2 hours, all 25 slots
filled up.
Yanoff doesn’t know how to keep Topnotch going during these next few months. So to
sustain himself, he’s hopping across industries to a gig that he already loves. The work feels
right, too.
“It could bring kids all over the world in this virtual space to continue acting,” he said. “It
could really give them a creative outlet in this time when we all need an outlet.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 27For Pet Care Providers, Sheltering
in Place is Especially Rough
> The business: Pets in the City, a pet care company based in West Los Angeles
> The challenge: No one is traveling, so boarding isn’t needed. Many clients are
working from home, so demand for walking and daycare has sunk. Hands-on dog
training and social distancing don’t mix.
> The solution: Experiment with virtual dog training and digital content. Hope
some clients continue to need dog walking and daycare services.
Aaron Hill and his wife, Leigh Oblinger
Hill, board dogs at their home in West Los
Angeles. Their boarding sessions feature
group hikes and outdoor play—kind of like
summer camp for your furry friend.
This time last year, the Hill’s were boarding
15-20 dogs on any given night as their
clients enjoyed spring break. Right now,
they’re boarding exactly zero dogs, and it’s
hard to predict when bookings will show
up again.
When Hill launched Pets in the City 14 years
ago it was a dog walking business, and
he was the sole employee. Since then, he’s
added training, daycare, and boarding
-- his most profitable revenue stream. He’s
also hired 2 employees in addition to his
wife.
At the outset of 2020, Hill expected $500K
in annual sales. Although he says it’s
too soon for an updated projection, he
predicts they’ll pull in around $200K. With
minimal money coming in, he had to let
Aaron Hill, founder of Pets in the City, go of his 2 employees; he hopes to rehire
with a pack of pooches them once business picks back up.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 28Since the outbreak of COVID-19 across the US, their training business has dropped by
about 80%. A handful of daycare and walking clients have stayed on, but they make up a
fraction of business as usual.
On a typical morning, pre-virus, you could find Hill hiking through the Santa Monica
mountains with 15-18 dogs in tow. He and his staff would then work their way south for
neighborhood walks—from Brentwood to Santa Monica to Venice.
His team used to walk 50-60 dogs a day. But last Thursday, Hill only had 11 pickups; he
expects this number to keep dropping.
On Thursday evening, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered all Californians to stay
home except for necessary trips. Officials are encouraging people to walk and exercise
their dogs, as long as they stay 6 feet apart from non-family members. But it’s likely people
won’t consider dog walking services essential -- unless they’re not working from home, are
too busy for their pups, or feel compelled to support their walkers.
Some of Hill’s dog walking clients say they’ll continue to use him “until the government tells
us to lock our doors.” But Hill recognizes that even his most dedicated customers may need
to hit pause at some point.
Hill is considering making instructional YouTube content and offering virtual training
sessions—an idea that piqued his interest before COVID-19. People may have extra time
to work through problems with their pups at the moment. And it’s likely furry friends
everywhere feel anxious and cooped up, so perhaps his clients (and beyond) will value
content that helps dogs burn off some energy.
Hill can look forward to his business spiking when all this is over: Many clients who had to
cancel spring break trips assured him they’ll drop their dogs off the minute it’s safe to leave
LA.
Another bright spot? His basset hounds, Beau and Bronco, couldn’t be more delighted to
have mom and dad stay put.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 29A Microbrewery Sustains Itself on
Crowlers and Community
> The business: Gloucester Brewing Company, a small-town microbrewery
specializing in ales
> The challenge: Had to close their taproom
> The solution: Switch to crowler and growler fills, and appeal to community for
support
Gloucester Brewing Company
occupies a brick, colonial-style
building at the foot of Main Street
in Gloucester, Virginia. Gloucester
is a small town that’s popular for
families and people who commute
to Richmond and Williamsburg.
The brewery’s been open shy
of 1.5 years, but it’s already a
neighborhood fixture. Co-owner
Myron Ware says their patio’s
usually packed on sunny weekends
-- and that he can’t walk into
the place without seeing 4 or 5
regulars. They sold about 350
Gloucester Brewing Co’s taproom, currently barrels of beer last year, their first
seating no one. year in business.
After Virginia’s governor banned gatherings of more than 10 people in restaurants last
week due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Globrewco shut their taproom and shifted to
takeaway sales. They’ve set up a sales table outside: One employee takes orders and
another fills crowlers or, after a thorough wipe down, growlers.
While their sales have certainly sunk -- a 50% drop last Friday, compared to the Friday
before -- locals are showing up and building up quarantine stashes.
On their first day offering to-go beer only, Ware felt encouraged by sales: 23 customers
came through and purchased more beer per person than usual; and a couple of regulars
bought 8 crowlers and tipped $20. Ware says that if people continue to buy crowlers, that’ll
help keep the lights on.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 30They recently invested in a crowler machine -- which couldn’t have been better timing --
but nearly sold through their 32oz crowler containers (called “brites”) over the weekend.
Crowler brites are in high demand at the moment: Ware was only able to find one supplier
with 32oz brites in stock, and they’re priced 100% higher than competitors. He says he’s not
that desperate yet and decided to buy from a more reasonably priced competitor and
wait the 2 weeks.
Ware is trying to keep his team of 5 busy and has assigned his taproom people tasks that
are often neglected, like cleaning the outsides of beer tanks and shining interior wood
surfaces. It’s a small brewery, and Ware says there aren’t a ton of these one-off projects,
but he’s trying to come up with some more.
Their brewers are continuing to make beer but, with a finite amount of cooler space, they
need to keep selling in order to keep brewing. They don’t distribute to grocery stores and
aren’t doing home deliveries, so they’re solely relying on crowler and growler sales onsite
-- and hoping to reopen the taproom soon.
If the taproom needs to stay closed, Ware says “it’s probably going to be a few weeks
before we have to start really restricting hours.”
For Ware, the biggest bright spot in all this is the outpouring of support he’s received from
his community. “We built our brewery to give Gloucester residents and visitors a place to
call their own, and they don’t want to lose it.”
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 31Amid Widespread Cancellations, a
Marketing Agency Looks to Stays
Relevant by Building Communities
> The business: Scout Collective, a brand strategy and digital marketing studio
> The challenge: Projects placed on hold; clients’ marketing budgets will likely
shrink
> The solution: Develop brand messaging that builds customer loyalty,
community, and empathy
Early last week, Troy Monroe
received a Facebook notification
highlighting a memory from 5
years ago. It was a post he had
written about leaving a full-time
job and how nervous and excited
he was to launch Scout Collective,
his brand and digital marketing
studio.
Hitting the 5-year mark was
a major win, Monroe says:
“Everybody says if you can stay
in business 5 years, that’s the
tipping point. And then a day later,
everything imploded.”
Troy Monroe (center), with two of his employees The implosion, of course, came
(via Monroe)
in response to COVID-19.
Connecticut-based Scout Collective specializes in brand strategy, brand activation, and
digital marketing. In Monroe’s words: “connecting businesses with customers.”
They’re a team of 4, and they tend to work with small, founder- or owner-led businesses in
Connecticut, often in the restaurant and entertainment spaces. They recently worked for an
ax-throwing outfit whose business was “going gangbusters” before all this happened.
Last year, Scout Collective brought in $260k. Monroe expects a 10-25% drop in business this
year -- unless they pivot to new opportunities -- but says it’s extremely difficult to predict
right now.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 32Clients like Monroe’s are especially reeling from mandated and recommended closures
aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19.
Yesterday New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut took the CDC’s recommendation and
banned all gatherings of over 50 people; closed movie theaters and gyms; and limited
restaurants and bars to take-out and delivery only. The closures will stay in place “until
further notice.”
Ohio, Illinois, and D.C. have announced similar restrictions on bars and restaurants, and the
Bay Area ordered everyone in 6 counties to stay home for the next 3 weeks except to meet
essential needs.
Clients recently tabled 2 of Scout Collective’s major projects, and Monroe says they lost
a couple of retainers from clients in the restaurant/entertainment space. Within the past
week their monthly projections dropped 15%. He’s concerned about his business, as he
knows marketing is often the first line item to go when budgets tighten.
But he’s also seeing an opportunity to support businesses that are likely hurting by doing
what his team does best: marketing with emotion and connecting people to brand
messaging.
“I think messaging more than anything else is what’s going to keep us together,” Monroe
says. As a result, he anticipates his business will shift from brand identity to brand
management.
Last weekend his team crafted a message to customers of one of their clients, a small
tech resale company. Monroe is hoping to win more of this type of work: opportunities to
help businesses communicate with their customers authentically and explain what they’re
dealing with.
“When businesses are communicating in an open and honest way, customer loyalty
becomes apparent,” he says. “People may not be able to support your business financially
during [this time], but ultimately I think that’s going to lead to much deeper relationships
and appreciation for those businesses once they do open -- if they’re able to survive this.”
Monroe is also seeing the outbreak as an opportunity to build community and help each
other out. “I think compassion has been lacking in our society for quite some time and
sometimes it takes something like this to refocus… on what’s important… and bring people
together.”
Monroe spent the weekend assessing how Scout Collective can be most helpful to their
clients during this tumultuous time. “We may not make a huge dollar on doing it, but
if a dollar is spent, we’re hoping to help people spend it wisely,” he says. That includes
brainstorming with clients about how to adapt to consumers’ current needs.
The Pivot Point: How 19 small businesses are responding to Covid-19 33You can also read
