Business against a pandemic: entrepreneurs on how to save their business in a crisis
His Work / / January 07, 2021
Cafe and grocery delivery services
Ekaterina Gamova
Brand director of the Anderson family café chain.
We are now in a frankly difficult position. Over the past week, the flow of guests in different cafes has decreased: somewhere by 50%, somewhere by 90%. The catering service has completely ceased its work. It is already clear that it will only get worse. The prices for the products we buy have increased along with the exchange rate of the dollar and the euro. For the last two weeks we have been urgently looking for domestic suppliers of raw materials. This is a jeweler's job, stable quality is a rarity even with very good Russian suppliers.
Almost all of our cafes are located in rented premises. Revenue has already decreased, and rental rates have not decreased, and there is no need to wait for a rental vacation either. Maybe the city will make concessions, but in our network only 4 out of 37 cafes in Moscow and the Moscow region are located in buildings rented from the city, the rest of the lessors are private. We have already informed our partners that we are forced to suspend all payments in the event of such force majeure. Now we pay only for mandatory payments: salary, taxes, utilities.
We, as they say, adjust ourselves from the wheels to changing conditions. The first step was to strengthen security. We interviewed the guests: they found out what our measures they consider important and what else they propose to do in this direction.
We process door handles every half hour, every hour - all toys. After each guest, we wipe the tables and buttons to call the waiter with a safe disinfectant solution. Cooking with gloves and masks.
Now, when these measures are no longer enough, they organized the delivery of products directly from the cafe. Thus, we save the staff: we orient all employees to courier work. We offer everything for delivery: from frozen dumplings and cheese cakes to hot meals, drinks and desserts for adults and children. Even animation - both a full-fledged festive program and just the services of an animator. He can come and play with the child if the mother solves her work issues at a distance or is simply emotionally burned out of being tete-a-tete with the baby within four walls.
I advise colleagues in the shop, first of all, to be flexible. Look for new distribution channels: form an offer "all with you", organize delivery through aggregators or on your own, agree to bring lunches to those offices that are located near you and have not yet switched to a remote location, come up with something of their own.
Be flexible in finding new promotion channels. Place your own posts in groups on social networks, connect your acquaintances, regular customers, comrades in misfortune. Grow your restaurant accounts, be on the alert - now is the time for that.
Second, critically analyze your expenses and optimize everything you can. No one can predict how long the service crisis will last. Avoid disposable cups, expensive packaging, and expensive advertising services. Divide tasks among your employees and look for new talents. Perhaps some of you are shooting videos, some are almost professionally surfing social networks and writing bright texts. Remember: the one who will run fast and creatively react to the circumstances that life offers us will survive in the market.
Anton Korbutyak
CEO of FruitPack.ru, a delivery service for smoothie sets.
In this situation, grocery delivery services are especially useful to people. We recorded a doubling in the number of orders last week. But not everything is so simple. Some suppliers have been raising the cost of goods since April, explaining the purchase in foreign currency, not in rubles. We expect an increase in the purchase price due to a sharp jump in the dollar in the coming weeks.
We are not yet raising prices and do not plan to do so. Now we have free delivery by auto couriers in Moscow within the Moscow Ring Road. If the purchase price hits our economy hard, we will make delivery paid.
Entertainment and sport
Egor Sitnikov
Organizer of the bar quiz "ZBS".
I live in Ulyanovsk and am engaged in the intellectual and entertainment show "ZBS". The project recently turned 2 years old, during this time more than 1,000 people took part in the games. Usually we play once every two weeks for two days, because there are always a lot of people who want to - up to 150 participants in one day.
So far we have canceled the next series of games. This is directly related to quarantine and the ban on public events. If this regime drags on, the likelihood of canceling many corporate events will also be high. We are already thinking about the online format. It will take some time to develop it, but the project will exist anyway.
For entrepreneurs who organize events, I advise first of all not to lose heart. Make the most of your time and devote it to those aspects of the business that are usually forgotten and abandoned.
Come up with new stories for events, update your commercial proposal, discuss other formats with partners and contractors. Analyze the items of expenditure: maybe it is worth changing something, giving up unnecessary expenses, and somewhere just to save money. Get your health in order.
Quarantine is not eternal, you need to get out of it filled with new strength, energy and fresh ideas. You will always make up for yours. And I won't talk about the fact that any crisis is also a time of opportunities for realizing oneself in something new. It is obvious.
Daria Litovchenko
Founder of the outdoor workout service SPORTULES.
We help people take the risk of playing sports and provide outdoor group training in mini-groups of up to 6 people. Classes are held in parks and squares, you can find any nearest one and avoid traveling by public transport.
Our regular customers continue to train, but there has been no increase in new ones in the last three weeks. Our big challenge now is to tell people how important it is to improve their health, play sports and be outdoors. For those who have to give up their usual gym, we offer two free group workouts in any location upon presentation of a fitness club membership.
Elena Sinitsina
Executive Director of the Museum of Moscow Riflemen and the Museum of Military Uniforms of the RVIO.
I have an ANO, which includes two Moscow museums. In fact, these are such private museums with a public organization. We have no state budget. There is a founder who gives money for maintenance, but basically we earn ourselves. Due to what is happening now, our services are not in demand. It is quite clear that in the near future there will be no money for the maintenance of the museum.
At the end of February, an order was adopted by the Moscow Government on measures to combat the coronavirus. Children were forbidden to go to museums, and these are our main visitors. In March, we received about 1/6 of the income compared to the previous two months. Today we are completely closed.
It's great that this year interest in museums has grown a little. Together with the right strategy, this allowed for a small airbag. We will live on it in the near future. We sent those who work directly with visitors home, keeping 2/3 of their salary. Those who are engaged in promotion and PR remained at a distance. And I also told everyone that if during self-isolation someone really gets sick, then you definitely need to take a sick leave from the clinic. It is paid by the social insurance fund, not the organization, this will help reduce the financial burden.
My top tip to all small business owners is to talk to your employees. Gather the whole team, explain what is happening, answer questions.
This will avoid conflict situations, resentment and omissions. Before closing, I held a collective meeting, explained everything and answered all questions. She honestly said that in the current conditions the money would be enough for two months. At this time, I will be able to calmly pay my salary, and then, I hope, we will return to our duties and everything will be fine with us.
The medicine
Alexander Kosarev
CEO, co-founder Zdravprint.
We manufacture individual orthoses - medical devices that replace plaster casts in traumatology, and are also used in neurology, for example, for the treatment of patients with a stroke, or for people with cerebral palsy. There are 3 people in the team - this is the backbone that deals directly with technology and production. At the moment, our main market is Russia, but we are already receiving requests from foreign companies.
Since we make orthoses using our own technology, and we buy the material from a Moscow manufacturer, we did not change the prices. However, the manufacturer of the material uses imported raw materials, therefore, predicts a quick rise in prices by 10-15%.
In this whole situation, we try to find a positive moment. During the weakening of the ruble, Russian producers have a chance to increase their market share. It is necessary to create an offer in those niches where there is a strong dependence on imports.
The volume of orders increased - this is due to the work that was carried out before the start of the epidemic. True, we have a new customer who was unable to purchase imported serial orthoses due to the jump in the euro exchange rate, but we were able to offer an alternative.
Coincidentally, right now we are carrying out a large order. With the help of courier services, we remotely provide production with materials and spare parts, we ship goods to customers.
IT and services for business
Dmitry Korobitsyn
General Director of the "Supplier of Happiness" company.
Our company is engaged in wholesales and dropshipping, we work with online stores: we help them store, collect and deliver orders to customers. A lot of people depend on us. Now there is no critical decline in sales, but some tendencies towards it are already noticeable.
In such a situation, our goal is to learn how to work remotely and keep employees safe.
Since March 9, we have transferred everyone who works in the office to remote work mode. Our warehouse and pick-up points cannot stop functioning - they cannot be transferred online. In early March, we installed ultraviolet recirculators, sanitizers, purchased thermometers and medical masks. They started keeping temperature logs, and sent several people with flu symptoms home.
During peak hours, many people come to pick-up points for orders. To avoid this, we made a landing page for couriers on the site, where they can write the order number before going to our warehouse. When the delivery man arrives, the parcel will be prepared and quickly handed over to him. Previously, the waiting time was up to 20 minutes, now we have reduced it to three minutes.
We depend on logistics, Russian Post, transport companies and courier services. If our logistics partners are forced to stop working, we will have to follow them. We will be able to accept and process orders, but we will not ship them, we will continue to provide only digital services that do not require contact with the goods.
Maxim Agafonov
Director of the Russian part of Ecwid.
We have been making a designer of online stores and have been helping people sell their products on the Internet for 10 years. Ecwid has three offices in Russia (in Ulyanovsk, Samara, Vladivostok) and one in the United States, in Encinitas, California. More than 160 employees work in the Russian part.
Now is the time for businesses to go online. And for those who are already selling on the Internet, it is worth adding delivery methods that are suitable for the situation (parcel terminals and couriers), so as not to force customers to crowd in queues at the Russian Post offices. And it's never too late to create an airbag: put it off, just a little bit.
So far, new customers are only growing, but we are worried about old ones, as their revenue may decrease due to a decrease in the number of purchases. For Russian clients, we have all tariff plans in rubles, they remain at a fixed level, despite currency surges.
From March 15, we switched to a remote mode of operation. You can come to the office on urgent matters, everything is disinfected there according to an enhanced program. We bought sanitizers for employees and other topical items. We did not buy toilet paper in large quantities, here it is as usual.
Katerina Bogina
Founder and Managing Partner of Insight Group, a training and consulting company.
For training companies, the situation instantly became critical. At first, events of 50 people and more were banned, then 20, which means that all trainings, strategic sessions and meetings were abruptly paused. In this situation, online education suffered a little less, but even many large companies, not to mention medium-sized businesses, have completely frozen their education budgets.
First of all, we had several strategic sessions within the company to keep the situation under control. We discussed what products to focus on and what steps to take. Literally in one day, we moved to quarantine, without losing efficiency: the team could work remotely with clients and among themselves in daily tasks.
Now we are reorienting ourselves to services that do not require physical presence: building assessment systems, developing methodology and creating training videos.
We had a good opportunity to rebuild: many of the planned modular programs were already half online, so it remained to translate them even more into a remote format.
The most surprising thing is that demand for some products has increased. For example, some of the companies decided that during a lull it is possible to do those things that often do not reach their hands, and with them we develop training weeklies on professional competencies. Employees will receive them only after leaving the quarantine.
We are considering several scenarios for the development of events - from months of calm and concentration only on online products to a rapid return to square one in April. The near future will show in which scenario we will move.
We encourage entrepreneurs to openly share their experiences. Do you know how to help a business survive a crisis? Let us know in the comments!