Special for Infobae of The New York Times.
At a time when most parking lots were empty, the gravel parking lot outside Detroit was overflowing with cars, an eerie sight in fall 2020. A contingent of masked visitors looked around, meandering down a tree-lined driveway toward some lights in the depths of the forest, not knowing what to expect.
The visitors only knew that the night promised an escape from their homes. They had come for the Glenlore Trails and the promise of an unusual 800 meter hike through a sunlit forest.
“We wanted it to be like walking through a movie,” explained Scott Schoeneberger, who created Glenlore Trails with his wife, Chanel. “We had no idea what ‘good’ was. We just went out and set up a lot of lights in the woods.”
That night, visitors experienced more than just a few lights: they were immersed in a world of interactive video walls, multicolored waterfalls, video projections that illuminated the forest canopy, and much more. The project was a success. Tickets for the month were sold out within a week, and Schoeneberger added more dates. It didn’t take long for the couple to realize that such a far-fetched idea could help their family’s flagship company, Bluewater Technologies, which creates live experiences for corporate and convention clients, weather the COVID-19 pandemic and avoid having to absent some of its 225 employees.
They certainly did not expect that three years later, Glenlore Trails would account for six percent of the company’s revenue, and that in five years it could become 25 percent.
“During the pandemic I saw a lot of risk taking,” said Laura Huang, director of the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative at Northeastern University. “It’s easy to take big risks when you’re at zero.”
Many businesses are leaving those pandemic changes as customers demand to get back to business as usual. But for some owners, like Scott Schoeneberger, the pandemic proved fertile ground for experimentation that continues to pay off. They are making those changes permanent.
For that to happen, Huang added, “a successful turnaround needs to complement the business, not cannibalize it.”
When the pandemic hit, Schoeneberger realized the company’s AV equipment was idle in the warehouse and Bluewater staff needed work. So he approached her mother, Suzanne Schoeneberger, who owns the company, and the team with her idea. They all agreed, and in just one month Scott Schoeneberger, 37, and his wife, 34, went from frantically searching for land to rent to welcoming their first guest to Glenlore Trails. To get noticed, they hired an influencer to promote the ride on TikTok.
“Given the circumstances, everybody was willing to give it a try,” Scott Schoeneberger said.
They have now branched out and work with convention and corporate clients on similar experiences. They have also expanded the walk to a mile, and have released new tracks each season. They have purchased specific equipment for the project, are considering purchasing a permanent location, and have hired five full-time and twenty part-time employees for the company’s themed entertainment division.
“It really has become a research and development center for us,” Schoeneberger said.
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Changes that build on experience in a new way are more likely to succeed, Huang said. “The small businesses that stay are the ones that get back to the solids.”
For Kyle Beyer, that meant continuing with the vaccinations. Before the pandemic, his independent pharmacy in Shorewood, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee, did not offer them; now that service accounts for 10 percent of revenue and is indirectly responsible for doubling the company’s prescription business in three years.
“What the COVID pandemic did for us was squeeze five years of marketing into one year,” Beyer said. “It put people at our doors who otherwise would have had no reason to decide to come in.”
Beyer, 37, had been a pharmacist for more than a decade when she decided to buy her own location in 2019. After eight promotional calls, a Shorewood pharmacist agreed to meet. They closed the deal on what was then an 88-year-old business, North Shore Pharmacy, on March 1, 2020.
Less than two weeks later, everything changed. Beyer was no longer just a pharmacist going to work, but an entrepreneur navigating the unknown.
The pharmacy never closed because it was considered an essential business, but many of Beyer’s customers were at high risk of serious illness and hesitant to leave their homes, so he began offering curbside pickup and expanded delivery services. at home. With fewer customers inside, she began renovating the store, which hadn’t been remodeled since the 1980s.
Finally, when the doses of the COVID-19 vaccine became available, he signed up to receive them. Beyer didn’t think North Shore Pharmacy would be on the top of the list to receive the doses, but in early January 2021, the state health department called to say that 100 doses would be delivered the next day.
What followed was 24 hours of chaos. He immediately reinvented a renovated exhibition section as a waiting area for the vaccine service.
“We realized that our opportunity is to be someone at the local level who can solve problems,” Beyer said.
In March 2022, he purchased a second location in a neighboring community, where he was able to add compounding—creation of specialty drugs—to his services.
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Sometimes the change is not what you do, but who you do it for. For LaQuanta Williams, that meant ending residential cleaning to focus on business customers. It is a change that became permanent.
“COVID sent my business in a direction I hadn’t anticipated,” Williams said. “I lost all my residential customers in one day. Literally the same day.”
Williams founded his company, White Glove Cleaning Solutions, while a student at the University of Akron, Ohio. He was taking an entrepreneurship course and his professor asked students to start their own companies. A friend observed that she was always cleaning, and thus the idea was born.
Her project impressed her professor, who suggested she apply for a position as a cleaner at the university to gain experience before going into business. She got the job and decided to put off starting her own company.
But in 2018, Williams, now 45, was fired. She decided to accept her severance pay and start the company. She rented an office and started handing out postcards. Her schedule began to fill up almost immediately with residential clients.
They all disappeared in March 2020. It was scary at first, Williams said. But he had been researching electrostatic sprayers that would allow him to quickly disinfect surfaces. He bought two and began calling stores and offices to offer his services.
Again, his schedule quickly filled up again. A minority vendor assistance program put her in touch with several contractors, who hired her to do post-construction cleanup. She has had to hire five people to help keep up with the demand, and she can’t imagine returning to residential cleaning.
“When I do, I will be able to be more demanding with clients,” he concluded.
LaQuanta Williams, owner of White Glove Cleaning Solutions in Akron, Ohio, May 15, 2023. (Andrew Dolph/The New York Times).
Kyle Beyer, owner of North Shore Pharmacy in Shorewood, Wisconsin, on May 11, 2023. (Jamie Kelter Davis/The New York Times)
2023-06-11 18:03:31
#businesses #experienced #pandemic #permanent
