"He who marches out of step hears another drum." ~ Ken Kesey
we added some new options to our work (fulfillment and low qty high color count at discounted pricing) and started bringing in masks from China. We are down only about 3% for the month. The efficiency is much lower and the 100K masks are a gamble, so the profit margin is lower and no idea what's gonna happen with the masks. . . The PPP and EIDL will help. Without a doubt, doing something new was the only way to survive. Moral of the story is LISTEN TO HOMER! He said, he'd help those who are willing to fight for it. It was an eye opener so we pivoted and found something to do. Thanx Homer!!!pierre
Quote from: blue moon on May 07, 2020, 04:12:21 PMwe added some new options to our work (fulfillment and low qty high color count at discounted pricing) and started bringing in masks from China. We are down only about 3% for the month. The efficiency is much lower and the 100K masks are a gamble, so the profit margin is lower and no idea what's gonna happen with the masks. . . The PPP and EIDL will help. Without a doubt, doing something new was the only way to survive. Moral of the story is LISTEN TO HOMER! He said, he'd help those who are willing to fight for it. It was an eye opener so we pivoted and found something to do. Thanx Homer!!!pierreWe stayed away from mask's. One of my direct competitors offered them and one of the first replys to his post about it was "wow your trying to make money on this pandemic". Hit home for me. So hard pass on that. But to each their own. We've done nothing different so far. We did see one of our employees decide not to come back to work. Decided that government check and doing nothing was fine by him. So in my eyes he quit. Still trying to decide if I reach out to the state about it.
Things do seem to be trickling at an increasing rate. We dove in head first with the masks and are doing many orders of them, what we are not doing is in house decoration on them. We are just brokering the work and charging much less than usual. As said it is to help keep the business afloat not to make profits. Once the governor announced that schools will not be returning this year we got a lot of orders for graduation signs, banners etc. Actually quite a few orders.
We received the PPP loan and my staff had no problem coming back.. which was pretty cool.We did start making masks when Homer did...We started with just my wife, 12 year old daughter and 18 year old stepson.. My daughter would take orders on the phone, pack the bags and call the people when they were ready. The cops were called on us twice...but since we were making masks and i was the owner and it was the immediate family - no issues.After 2 weeks of that, we brought some staff back to help when we were essential because we were sooo busy.What we did that worked for us (great marketing really) was in the beginning we started donating the masks to essential non profit workers in need. Like the Food Bank, a few orphanages, boys and girls club..We had people donate the fabric, we would make them on our embroidery machine, then we had volunteers pick them up and cut them at home. They would bring bags back to us the next day and we would put elastic on.Word started getting out pretty fast....so this is what we did..We still donated to the non profits... and i mean donated a lot...and we are still donating (close to 2000 donated already)Businesses we would charge - $5 plain, $8 with logo (charged because they would order a larger quantity)Personal use - We would only ask for a donation - we did not charge - People soooo appreciated this..and you know what? We made waaaay more $$ doing it this way then saying '$5 per' or whatever. It leaves a good taste with them. We maybe had 2 people that didnt donate, but the amount of money people left more than made up for it. We just left a little donation basket out where they would pick up their masks in a ziploc bag.We received so many thank you letters, people perception was we were helping everyone.We have made money, but i not a windfall, because we are donating so many, but the amount of press we have received it has been great marketing.We had a system where we could leave the masks so zero contact... everyone knows where we are now because they had to come pickup, we did not ship. People facebook msg us , called us, and emailed...So it can work....thats my story and im sticking to it.....LOL
Quote from: whitewater on May 08, 2020, 12:20:12 PMWe received the PPP loan and my staff had no problem coming back.. which was pretty cool.We did start making masks when Homer did...We started with just my wife, 12 year old daughter and 18 year old stepson.. My daughter would take orders on the phone, pack the bags and call the people when they were ready. The cops were called on us twice...but since we were making masks and i was the owner and it was the immediate family - no issues.After 2 weeks of that, we brought some staff back to help when we were essential because we were sooo busy.What we did that worked for us (great marketing really) was in the beginning we started donating the masks to essential non profit workers in need. Like the Food Bank, a few orphanages, boys and girls club..We had people donate the fabric, we would make them on our embroidery machine, then we had volunteers pick them up and cut them at home. They would bring bags back to us the next day and we would put elastic on.Word started getting out pretty fast....so this is what we did..We still donated to the non profits... and i mean donated a lot...and we are still donating (close to 2000 donated already)Businesses we would charge - $5 plain, $8 with logo (charged because they would order a larger quantity)Personal use - We would only ask for a donation - we did not charge - People soooo appreciated this..and you know what? We made waaaay more $$ doing it this way then saying '$5 per' or whatever. It leaves a good taste with them. We maybe had 2 people that didnt donate, but the amount of money people left more than made up for it. We just left a little donation basket out where they would pick up their masks in a ziploc bag.We received so many thank you letters, people perception was we were helping everyone.We have made money, but i not a windfall, because we are donating so many, but the amount of press we have received it has been great marketing.We had a system where we could leave the masks so zero contact... everyone knows where we are now because they had to come pickup, we did not ship. People facebook msg us , called us, and emailed...So it can work....thats my story and im sticking to it.....LOLwhere's a like button when you need one?
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.
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Topic: Coronavirus - effects on business (Read 32105 times)
