By the end of August, 163,735 U.S. businesses had closed since the beginning of the pandemic, according to Yelp’s September Local Economic Impact Report.
While 60% of those businesses will likely never reopen, 40% have been adapting to the pandemic and finding creative ways to weather the storm.
"Because of COVID-19, traditional assumptions you might have held about your customer may be obsolete," says Evian Gutman, a business strategist and author of the book "Coming Back From COVID."
Here’s how three businesses managed to reinvent themselves not just to survive but to thrive.
Mansa Tea: Forging a new customer base
As a handcrafted aged tea company, New York-based Mansa Tea worked with Michelin-starred restaurants and five-star hotels before the pandemic. In addition to selling their hospitality clients artisanal gourmet teas, the company (which launched in November 2018) would hold tea pairing workshops and other tea educational events.
But when the pandemic hit in March, restaurants and hotels closed and "we lost all of our wholesale revenue overnight," said founder Ashley Lim. Luckily, Lim and Mansa Tea weren't down on their luck for too long. By the end of June their monthly revenue was three times what it had been the June before.
How they did it:
► They adjusted to the virtual environment. Lim explored ways to make their in-person workshops virtual. For example, they had to ship the tea to customers. “During in-person workshops, we can brew for all the attendees, but during virtual workshops, attendees have to brew for themselves,” Lim says.
► They were willing to find a new customer. Rather than waiting for restaurants and hotels to recover, Mansa Tea found a market in companies looking for ways to hold virtual team building events and virtual ways to schmooze clients.
The Zutor Concierge: Channeling pandemic frustration
After struggling with helping her 8-, 6- and 3-year-old children with virtual learning this spring, Elyssa Katz turned exasperation into inspiration. "I knew I needed support for the Fall," she said. "If I felt this way, other parents were most likely feeling the same."
Katz trademarked the term "Zutor" – short for Zoom Tutor – and launched a matchmaking service between families and educators called The Zutor Concierge in May 2020. "The ultimate goal of the service is to support parents and their children who are struggling with distance learning, and at the same time, help qualified educators find jobs where they can use their skills," she said.
Though she started the service in Los Angeles where she resided, word soon got out to families in New York, Michigan and Florida. “Now, I have clients all over,” Katz added.
How she did it:
► She learned how to tell her company’s story. Katz looked for media opportunities to get the word out. "I’m always online reading articles," she said. "If I see there's an editor covering what I do, I'll reach out to that editor and introduce myself."
► She played up the company's unique advantage. Katz emphasized that she was a parent who understood what her clientele needed. "Because I'm a parent, I felt that I could do this from a different perspective than a traditional tutoring agency," she added.
Teambuilding.com: Scaling back to move forward
A love for team building and the impact it can have on an organization led Michael Alexis to invest in such events-themed brands as Museum Hack, a business that put on unconventional museum tours, and Gingerbread Wars, a company that runs holiday team building activities for employers. Yet, at the end of 2019, "we wanted a parent brand to tie all of our events together, so we acquired the teambuilding.com domain," said Alexis, CEO of the company.
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Covington, Washington-based Teambuilding.com, with its various divisions, was bringing in $250,000 per month in revenue, as late as February of this year. Then "in early March, museums closed, which shuttered our tour operations," said Alexis. "At the same time, the corporate clients that do team building events with us stopped planning events. In three days we went from $250,000 per month to zero revenue."
Yet, by October, they had not only recovered their previous revenue numbers, but they substantially exceeded them, counting among their clients Apple, Amazon and Google.
How they did it:
► They made a complete pivot. "As local team building events disappeared overnight, we saw a surge in interest in ways to connect and engage remote workers," Alexis said. The company quickly developed concepts for virtual team building activities, such as one called "Tiny Campfire," where they send s'more kits to participants in advance and then bring everyone on a Zoom call for camp games and ghost stories. This allowed them to expand into new areas, such as virtual holiday parties and virtual retirement celebrations.
► They cut their costs. Teambuilding.com had 45 employees when the pandemic hit. To survive the initial shock, they laid off all but five team members. Once the company began to bounce back through the virtual teambuilding, they hired their former staff back – and added more than 30 additional workers.
The pandemic doesn’t have to be bad for business.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Small biz during the pandemic: 3 companies that are thriving