"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
As a side note, we chose not to do the PPP nor SBA loan. We are going to ride this out with out being in more debt.
I was under the impression you couldn't do both.Dirk, who did you use for the eidl, or did you go direct? I might try for that one too.We just got notice our PPP was funded. We are starting to get busier, so it's nice that we have the help coming back in.
here's our story: Back in early march when they started shutting down large groups over 50 people, we lost almost all of our production and event jobs, everyone was backing out. I had a few k shirts in house ready to roll and they all bailed. We were still doing the smaller jobs until they shut down all non essentials, within 10 minutes we had a plan in place to hand out free "Open / Open for take out" banners to all local business still operating. This was huge for us, it propelled us into the spotlight and we were all over facebook, we made a large handful of new friends and contacts at major companies. This went on for two weeks or so. We also made the floor marking decals, 6' apart signage and all that for all the local groceries and minimarts. That kept us busy for a little while but it tapped out. Then on March 22nd, 6am I had an idea to make a mask. My puppy has a dog bone with extended "joints" on it and the shape was almost perfect for a mask Little revamp and away we went. I had made a couple, posted it on facebook and it went viral in our area. We had TV news stations from all over our area, newspapers, bloggers, you name, they contacted us. Might be small to everyone else but we had 80k hits and over 800 shares on that single post. It was crazy compared to our usual hits. I was texting Rob the whole time with my plans and status updates, so he was there from the beginning too We gave away a few hundred masks to local hospitals and nursing homes, anyone that was essential but not getting the inventory they needed. We started putting logos on them about a week later and then the orders started rolling in. We weren't making a fortune but we made enough to pay employees and all the bills. We were keeping track of how many we made off the number of staple boxes but we seriously lost track. I know it's well in the thousands, maybe 6-7k and we are still going strong. I have one last order for 2k and then my plan is to start looking for sources for finished product. We have shirts starting to roll in and for our area, there is an end in sight with the slow roll opening so I need to get back in shirt production mode... As of now, my plan is the Badger gaitor for the full face cover and Pierre's mask in black, still offering the logos since that is something that Karen home maker can't do...All in all, we are coming out further ahead than when we started in this mess, we have some serious street cred in our town and we have led our community in unity between all the local businesses working together. We hate that this all happened but in all honesty, it could not have been any better for us. All my employees stayed on full 40 hours since day one, and we are starting to turn the corner.
I am in the B2B Tech Market Nor Cal, 5ea Co Store orders and 4ea custom orders came in today. The largest single day volume since shut down. Feeling Grateful and Optimistic !