Hi Fans,
We want to tell you the story of our small business and what we have done in this new world. We are writing this partially for information and partially for catharsis. The speed at which this new world snuck up on us is still hard to believe. I hope readers will find this story informative and that the reality of this current paradigm will be very short-lived.
Instead of just complaining, we would like to start with the positives. Fortunately, we don’t have to look far for the bright side of this situation.
Firstly, we have gained a ton of new customers. These are mostly individuals who had not heard of us before or who previously chose to go out to get the products we sell from the grocery store. We love having new customers and the current rate of people making their first orders with us is unprecedented. This is largely due to our social media presence and all of the people like you who have chosen to tell friends to support this family owned business.
In addition, we have seen more offers from people to help promote us. Happy customers have shared posts, passed out postcards, and even written about us on their websites. This abundance of love and support should provide us all with hope for the future.
We are also getting a lot of personal thank yous from people. The best ones, while they are all appreciated, are the ones with the pictures of adorable kids enjoying our products.
As an essential business, we have been able to keep a normal schedule of going to work, filling orders and making some deliveries. As our business model is changing from mostly selling to other businesses to selling mostly to individuals, we have also had some free time in the office to make some improvements to our webstore. We recently completed tagging “Healthy Choices” so that can now be searched on our website. If you have to stock up on non-perishables for your Stay-At-Home isolation, we want people to stay healthy.
Unfortunately, this crisis has also brought some challenges to our company. For the first time since our parents bought the business almost 30 years ago, staying open is a question, not a given. For the first time, we have had to lay off some staff because so few of our normal customers are ordering. These are people who have worked hard for us for years and who we treat like family. We miss them and can only hope they are ok and that government bailouts will help them pay their bills. We have committed to continue to pay their health insurance premiums for as long as we can.
Business has been anemic. Just for comparison, a week’s worth of orders from individuals is roughly equivalent to one of the normal weekly orders from one of our largest customers.
The uncertainty of the length of this crisis is also troubling. We are hoping that we make enough income to stay open but many of our customers are closed. The money that we are owed from a month ago or so may or may not ever get to us. In addition to our own stress of trying to stay open, with the income greatly reduced, we are also having to make hard choices on which vendors we are going to pay. These are companies we love working with and who we rely on for our livelihood. It feels terrible to not be able to do more to sustain them as well.
With the continued support of our customers, new and old, we are hoping to weather this storm. Thank you all for your continued support.
Sincerely,
Bonnie & Schecky