Kateřina Haring is the owner of the Moravian company Dynamic Group and belongs to our ranking 135 The most influential women in the Czech Republic. Her business hit hard coronavirus in February. During a single week in February, her company, which is preparing exhibitions, stands and presentations for key European trade fairs for clients, disrupted a key pandemic and caused great damage – Dynamic Group lost two million euros in a few days.
Now, after more than half a year, Kateřina Haring is taking stock. She wrote a personal commentary for Forbes in the form of her diary entries. As president of the Czech-Moravian Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers, she also reflects on the situation with which the second wave of coronavirus decimates Czech business.
And not only large companies, but especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Although the commentary is written with exaggeration, it sounds very frustrating. Entrepreneurs are also mothers who, in addition to managing companies and teams, also have to operate distance learning for their children.
As personal experience shows, this is often a role worthy of a superhero.
Prolog
beginning of September, North Moravia
8:00 in the locker room before an hour of walking:
Kateřina: “Hi Lucko, how are you, what about your daughter? He can’t even go to the high school he got to in April, can he?
Lucie: “Don’t even talk to me, they have distance learning… How can he learn to play the piano remotely? And they say we should buy at least the keys for 15-20 thousand, they wrote to me from school. Where should I take it? We didn’t even get the promised bonuses for paramedics! “
(relieves with swearing)
K: “How is that possible?”
L: “They say there is no money left.”
(Lucie works in the maternity ward of a large hospital in a regional town)
Five minutes later for a walking lesson:
Another friend (also working in health care) snorting on the belt next to me: “If those schools close, I’ll really cough it up, I really won’t give another teaching like that at home in the spring….”
Online lessons are being prepared after the holidays at our small village five-year-old. We got the passwords and I set everything. The children still managed to have two hours of IT lessons to at least tell them something, but it is not enough. Neither parents nor children are ready for the smooth running of any online education – which will be revealed in another month.
The Czech-Moravian Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers is preparing a survey of the damage caused by the Copvid period to our business. We already have numbers from abroad, so we’ll see what the comparison will be like. I also have a personal, business view of everything. Our company makes offers and calculations, prepares orders for which we received inquiries during the summer (when exhibitions and fairs did not take place anyway) – especially for foreign events.
Moved, postponed
mid-September
We are turning trucks again, the autumn trade fair events, which were in force a week ago, have been postponed. Again, unnecessary money – not only ours, but also clients. I do not understand why they do not inform about the cancellation earlier, they certainly have decided it in advance. Why does he always announce it the day before or in the morning when the trucks leave? Is it on purpose? Who should it damage and dispose of?
We cannot help this issue. It’s better not to talk about how the cursors swear.
In Europe alone, 3,300 exhibitions and trade fairs have been canceled or postponed, according to the European Exhibition Industry Association, and the business losses of companies in this sector are estimated at 39 billion euros. 1.2 million jobs are at risk. Our field of exhibitions and fairs was the first to be stopped as a result of sanctions and restrictions.
It is now clear that we will be the last field to be allowed again. Exhibitions and trade fairs are one of the most important communication channels for companies and for business development. The reopening of exhibitions and trade fairs, together with the organization of B2B events, will be a very important part of restarting the economy and its recovery.
Trade fairs are not just the organizers themselves. They are also the ones who design and build the stands, clean them, supply catering, flowers, audiovisual equipment and everything else.… How long can we last?
It is clear that there will be no fairs by the end of the year. And so are the countries in Asia and America that I am in contact with: everyone reports that their “business is zero”. Everything is moved, postponed. The declines are 95 percent.
Of course we are not sitting with our hands folded, but we are looking for other options… We are rubbing like screws, but so far without a certain result. None of the surveyed banks wants to lend to us to finance the new business plan due to poor results this year.
1. 10. 2020A: Mail from athletic preparations that training will take place despite taking some restrictive measures.
I can’t go to the gym again tomorrow. Oh no. Sedentary work is increasing, we are working even harder, but it is not visible anywhere yet. It’s on the brain.
5. 10. 2020: An e-mail has arrived from ZUŠ that the teaching of the dance field will only be distance. The teacher sent an e-mail with an exact description of the warm-up exercises and a link to the song on which they are rehearsing the choreography. In the email from athletic preparations assure us that athletics classes have an exception and training will be…
8. 10. 2020: So they canceled my next business meeting. The Czech traffic light is so scary that my friends and business partners from abroad call and write to me, terrified by what is happening here. Business meetings are also beginning to move and cancel again.
13. 10. 2020: In the morning in the office, the situation is getting worse. A week ago, I wrote an SMS to a friend of a nurse who has three children, my husband rides with an ambulance. I ask how he is doing and if he manages it – for the second week without an answer…
(In the spring I lent her two tablets for the children so that they could learn distance learning, in the summer she wanted to return them, so I told her we didn’t need them now… How far-sighted it was!)
All sports for children and adults at zero… And it rains all week…
At nine in the morning I call one member of the association (former teacher) because of an urgent question, she doesn’t answer my phone. He calls until noon with the words – I’m sorry, I taught the children a friend who has to go to work and can’t assist in distance learning.
14. 10. 2020: What we were afraid of happened. Distance learning for the first grade. The other one has been going online for two weeks and is divided into halves. In basic art schools, there can only be individual tuition.
16. 10. 2020: Friday night, I’m nervous, I found out that I missed a science assignment for my daughter. Fortunately, they do not want to send a completed scan to school, only the teacher wrote that she would check the task when they were back in school.
For the third time this week, it was not possible to connect the class via Teams. who learn with her (for sure) so that none of the tasks and assignments escape us. In the same way, some of the tasks go by e-mail, some through Teams and we pick up something in a box at the school. Why doesn’t it unite?
It’s a cut when I pick up my daughter from my parents around six every day, they’re upset and sometimes upset that they don’t have time to go through everything the kids have to learn honestly, so sometimes we catch up on reading, English and everything they can’t . Sometimes my parents and I don’t even talk because they are tired and I’m out of work. Grandmother and grandfather feel that I have little interest in my daughter and that I should go sooner…
Now? When is it necessary to work much more than ever?
18. 10. 2020: I call our ajťák if the tablets we have for our clients in stock could be used by children for teaching – he promised to check the operating system, because it is an older model. If I could, I could offer them to a school for students from disadvantaged families.
19. 10. 2020: At 10 a.m., a high school student stopped by to practice. They cannot physically walk, but they can work from home, which is not a problem for a graphic student. I ask why he didn’t do the job we gave him. “I couldn’t do the job, I looked after my younger sister.”
Should I be mad at him? When I imagine his mother having to go to work…
Epilogue
In short, the Czech-Moravian Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Managers conducted a survey among members at the beginning of April and now at the end of September, which showed us the following:
As many as 75 percent of them took over the main focus of family care, including care for children or grandparents. Half of the respondents stated that they could not do their job precisely because of caring for the family during the day and caught up with them at night.
70% of member companies experienced a decline in sales from March to September 30.
14% decrease by 90%.
46.6% decrease by 20-40%.
Have you requested a deferral of payments from financial institutions?
20% year
80% don’t
Has your company achieved any of the forms of COVID support?
Covid I – 2 our members
Covid II – 2 members
Covid III – 0
Covid rent – 1 member
We did not apply due to a large administrative burden – 20%
They asked, they didn’t get – 76%
How many of your employees were receiving nursing care?
In 72% of the companies of our members, 40% of the employees were in the nursing home.
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