“make it work” is a series about small business owners struggling to survive tough times.
When most of the parking lots were empty, the gravel roads in suburban Detroit were filled with cars. It was an unsettling scene in the fall of 2020. Streams of masked tourists looked around, wandering along tree-lined paths to the light deep in the forest. , I don’t know what will happen.
All the visitors knew was that the night promised an escape from home.they came Glenroa Trails And a rare half-mile hike through the lit forest is promised.
“I wanted it to feel like you’re walking in a movie,” said Scott Schoenberger, who founded Glenlore Trail with his wife, Chanel. “We didn’t have a standard for what ‘good’ was. We went out into the woods and lit a lot of lights in the woods. ”
Visitors that night experienced some lights. Immerse yourself in a world of interactive video walls, colorful waterfalls, and video projections that light up the forest canopy. This project was a big hit. Within a week, tickets had sold out for a month’s worth of performances, and Schoneberger had added more dates. The couple soon realized that the idea of this long-term goal was one of 225 employees as Bluewater Technologies, the family’s day job building live experiences for corporate and convention customers, weathered the COVID-19 pandemic. I realized that it might help protect the department from furloughs.
Certainly they didn’t expect Glenlore Trails to account for 6 percent of the company’s revenue in three years, and they expected it to account for 25 percent within five years. “It was a whirlwind, and it still feels like it, four years later,” said Schöneberger, who manages the event’s operations.
Bluewater, like many small businesses, struggled to survive during the pandemic. An August 2020 survey by Visa found that 67% of small businesses said they were changing course. Restaurants have started selling home meal kits and opened grocery stores. Virtual classes were offered at the gym. Some veterinarians have tried car visits.
“We’ve seen a lot of people taking risks during the pandemic,” said Laura Huang, director of Northeastern University’s Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative. “At zero, it’s easy to take big risks,” she said.
As customers demand a return to normalcy, many companies are putting the crux of the pandemic aside. But for some owners like Schöneberger, the pandemic has proved to be fertile ground for experimentation that continues to pay off. They make that pivot permanent.
To do so, “a successful pivot must complement the business, not cannibalize it,” said Dr. Huang.
When the pandemic hit, Schoneberger realized that the company’s audiovisual equipment was sitting dormant in storage and that Bluewater staff needed work. So he went to the company owner, his mother Susanne Schoeneberger, and the team to pitch his idea. They all agreed, and in just one month, Scheneberger, 37, and his wife, 34, went from frantically searching for land to rent to welcoming their first guests to Glenlore Trails. rice field. To spread this information, they hired influencers to promote their walks on TikTok.
“Everyone was happy to take on the challenge because of the circumstances,” Schoneberger said.
Today, they’re expanding their reach and working with conventions and corporate clients to deliver similar experiences. Also, the walking distance he expanded to 1 mile and released a new theme each season. They have purchased equipment specifically for this project, are considering purchasing a permanent location, and will employ his five full-time staff and his 20 part-time staff dedicated to the company’s themed entertainment division. Did.
“This is really our research and development center,” said Schöneberger.
Dr. Huang said pivots that rely on expertise in new ways are most likely to succeed. “Sustainable SMEs are companies that have returned to the strong element.”
For Kyle Beyer, that meant committing to vaccines. Before the pandemic, his independent pharmacy in Shorewood, Wisconsin, just north of Milwaukee, didn’t offer them. The service now accounts for 10% of his revenue, indirectly contributing to doubling the company’s prescription business in three years.
“What COVID-19 has given us is five years of marketing packed into one year,” Beyer said. “It brought people to our door who otherwise would have had no reason to choose to come.”
Beyer, 37, had been a pharmacist for more than a decade when he decided to buy his own clinic in 2019. After eight solicitation calls, Shorewood’s pharmacist agreed to an interview. They closed the deal with the then 88-year-old North Shore Pharmacy on March 1, 2020.
In less than two weeks, everything changed. Mr. Beyer was no longer just a pharmacist going to work, but a business owner traveling into the unknown.
The pharmacy was considered an essential business, so it never closed, but many of Bayer’s customers were at high risk of serious illness and were hesitant to leave their homes. So he expanded his existing delivery service by offering curbside pickup. As he had fewer customers in his store, he began renovating a space that hadn’t been updated since the 1980s.
Finally, when a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine became available, he registered to receive it. Beyer didn’t expect North Shore Pharmacy to be high on the list of early doses, but in early January 2021 he received a phone call from the state health department telling him that 100 doses would arrive the next day. .
24 hours of confusion followed. He soon reinvented the renovated exhibition section as a waiting area for vaccine services. “It just so happened that we had this large, beautiful area where 10 people could sit and talk and sit quietly,” Bayer said.
As word spread, people from nearby towns started driving to shoot. Bayer hired a full-time nurse to meet the increased demand. Although less intense, nurses still work part-time, providing child immunizations, back-to-school immunizations and travel services.
“We realized our opportunity was to be a local problem solver,” Beyer said.
In March 2022, he purchased a second location in a nearby community where he could add compounding (creating specialty medicines) to his services.
Sometimes it’s not about what you do, but who you do it for. For LaQuanta Williams, that meant closing residential cleaning services to focus on commercial customers. It’s a change she’s permanently trying to make.
“The coronavirus has taken an unexpected turn for my business,” Williams said. “I lost all of his residential customers in one day. Literally the same day.”
Williams started the company. cleaning solution for white gloves, as a student at the University of Akron, Ohio. She was taking an entrepreneurship course and her professor asked her students to start their own business. An idea was born when her friend noticed that she was always cleaning.
Her project impressed her professor, who encouraged her to apply for a cleaning job at the university to gain experience before starting her own business. Although she found her job, she decided to hold off on starting her own company.
But in 2018, Williams, now 45, was laid off from her job. She decided to take her severance pay and start her company. She rented an office and started handing out her postcards. Her schedule began filling up with her residential clients almost immediately.
They all disappeared in March 2020. Williams said she was scared at first. But she was working on an electrostatic sprayer that could disinfect surfaces quickly. She bought two of hers and started calling stores and offices that serviced them.
Again, her schedule filled up quickly. A program to help minority suppliers has connected her with several contractors who have been asked to clean up after construction. She’s had to hire five people to keep up with her demand, but she doesn’t think she’ll go back to cleaning houses.
“I can get picky about my clients when I do that,” she said.
