PANDEMIC GIVES BUSINESSES LESSONS IN SURVIVAL, INNOVATION

When the coronavirus outbreak forced Sean Giovanni to shut down his recording studio in for two months, he dropped off mobile equipment at staffers’ and artists’ homes. He hoped remote recording would bring in some revenue.

It did. Along with the income, Giovanni got an important lesson that will help his business long after the pandemic has subsided: The Record Shop doesn’t have to be limited to what it can produce onsite.

“Moving to strictly remote work over the past two months has birthed some valuable new ideas for how we can serve our clients in new ways,” Giovanni says.

From experienced owners such as Giovanni to others who just got started, the pandemic is testing their entrepreneurship and teaching valuable lessons about surviving and innovating, whether it’s doing more business remotely, grabbing the opportunity to make a new product or sacrificing some business to cut down on costs. Owners who are ingenious are learning how to survive the pandemic, and hopefully, to prosper in the future.

Nishantha Abeyrathne’s Sri Lankan company, B&B Engineering, has primarily done construction work at garment factories. The work disappeared when the government imposed a 24-hour curfew in March, effectively shutting the country down.

Within a week, the government allowed factories to reopen, but they were required to install sinks so employees could wash their hands. Abeyrathne seized upon this opportunity and designed a sink with a foot paddle so workers wouldn’t have to touch the faucet.

He ended up producing about 500 sinks, saving the jobs of his 14 workers and temporarily making up some lost revenue. But when the nationwide shutdown ended at in late May, demand for sinks declined and Abeyrathne had no work.

“I am now feeling the real effect of the coronavirus,” he says.