We can at least take some positives from the Covid lockdown!

The last year has been like no other with the never before experienced Covid pandemic.  We have all had to adapt and adjust how we live our lives.  At the moment it is hard to imagine returning to a normal life like we experienced before.  But I think a lot of us will approach life in a whole new way when things settle down.  From a business point of view it would be silly not to take some lessons from the Covid pandemic and put them into practice going forward.

Control

I think the thing that I learnt during the pandemic as a whole, is that sometimes things happen that are out with our control and we have to just roll with it and see what happens.  During the lockdowns we had no idea what would happen, or when things would return to some level of normality.  So we were forced to just take things as they came.

Planning

I have always struggled when things are outside my control.  During the pandemic with so much I couldn’t control I had to learn to just take things as they come.  I felt a lot more in control if I had a series of plans in place that would cover most eventualities.  With any luck a pandemic of this scale will not reoccur however we could definitely benefit from considering different scenarios occurring in the future.

Diversify

So many businesses suffered as a result of the lockdown restrictions and many were forced into approaching their business in a whole new way.  Many crafters specifically lost their main source of income, I wonder if this is due to relying too heavily on one income source.

To give you an idea of what I mean, there are some crafters who get the majority of their income from fairs and events.  Due to this income stream working so well for them they would often overlook other ways of appealing to customers.  To quote a few that I personally have talked to, “online shops require too much work, it is easier to sell face to face.”

I am not saying that they should not look at going back to events but I think they should look at diversifying where they gain their customers.  Therefore if they were, to move area for example, while they are trying to work out the best events are located they could continue to make an income from online sales.
The best businesses do not put all their eggs in one basket so to speak and I think the pandemic has forced many of us to change our businesses to cover more eventualities.

Shop Local

When some of the restrictions were lifted we were allowed some degree of freedom however we were encouraged to stay local.  Therefore many people started to look more to local businesses.  In addition when the Brexit agreement came into effect many people started to experience an increase in the cost of items from outside of Great Britain.  This got a lot of us thinking about how we could make more local customers aware of the products that we offered rather than them looking further afield.

Delivery

Many of us relied heavily on the postal and delivery services available from many companies.  Which got a lot of us thinking about how we can bring our products to people in their environment.  Many restaurants for example looked to offering their dishes in a takeaway capacity which would enable customers to still experience their food.  Many of us were forced into considering how we could package and post our products out to enable customers to shop from the comfort of their own home.

Although many of us were forced in to adapting to this approach I believe that it will be very beneficial to business to continue to offer this option.  If anything it would open up your customer base as you could appeal to new customers who maybe couldn’t access your products previously.

I believe it would be detrimental to us to try to return to operating our businesses as we did prior to Covid.  It has offered us a valuable situation where we were forced to adapt and approach our customers in a different way.  Although it would be nice to return to some normality I think we should also continue with the additional services and platforms that we have used during this time.

Time will lead many businesses to adapt as new scenarios are presented, I believe that the Covid pandemic just forced us to look at our businesses and how they could adapt.  If you are interested to see how a craft business can evolve when not faced with a pandemic please have a look at my post https://www.claireyatfairycrafters.com/growing-my-craft-business-how-i-did-it/

What changes did you have to make to your business during this time and which ones are you looking to continue into the future?  If you were adversely affected due to the lockdown please have a look at the support available to businesses on the UK government website https://www.gov.uk/coronavirus/business-support