Metamorphosis

Despite Covid-19’s profound impact on businesses, co-founders of Granadilla Swimwear Adam Duxbury and Josh Meltz have pivoted to launch an online farmers’ market, Granadilla Eats

- Thobeka Phanyeko

PIVOTING IN BUSINESS the lockdown started, Adam said, ‘we have to do something.’” During the lockdown, the demand for certain goods, services and products declined, to a point where some even became redundant. To remain relevant, and address the needs of the public in a time of crisis, the business partners made is defined as adopting a new strategy or shifting from your initial business model. Contrary to popular belief, that shift isn't always drastic as there are many, varied reasons to pivot, which then determines to what extent. “Our decision to pivot was immediate and unvalidated,” says Josh Meltz. “A week before a bold decision. “We ran with Adam’s first idea, and within 48 hours of conceptualising an online food delivery service, we sent out our first box.

“Our biggest concern was that our swimwear business would face a period of redundancy, our flagship store would close and almost all our stockists.”

But Josh and Adam are lucky to have staff who are resilient during a crisis.

GQ: Why launch an online farmers’ market?

Josh Meltz: At first, we focussed on one product, a box of fresh fruit and vegetables – that was intentional to keep our operations as simple as possible, and we hadn’t yet considered the idea of separating our products. That came later as we noticed that the rate at which customers stopped doing business with us was high. After consulting with them extensively, we discovered that the largest reason our customers were dropping off was due to a lack of choice. That was where we got the idea to create an online farmers’ market. It’s crazy to think that we’re now selling over 1 000 products online from over 100 small and local suppliers.