Let’s talk Pandemic - Business Series

Covid-19 has had an overwhelming impact on businesses small and large. Many have had to look at new ways to navigate all aspects of how they operate from finances, to stock and staff. This is a new realm for businesses so we want to highlight some of the ways people have adapted and changed with the times. Let’s Talk Pandemic - Business Series will feature a different businessperson each week.

Thomas Emmerson

OWNER - Vanguard 86

Tell us about your business and what you do?

Vanguard 86 does inbound digital marketing to grow a business's leads. We also do a bit of business transformation in putting a business on a new CRM, marketing and sales platform to support a business's growth using cloud-based systems. We're a team of 8 all based in New Plymouth servicing businesses across NZ ranging in size from $1m a year turnover to $20m+. It's nice and varied!

What areas of your (or your clients) business have you either kept the same or put more time/money into because of the pandemic?

Digital marketing has seen a huge focus. With trade shows and events wiped from the calendar, many businesses saw their biggest sales event (Mystery Creek) swept out from under them. While face-to-face visits were off the menu digital became the only available channel to reach customers. Combine that with more people sat at home and online during the lockdown, and we were ripe to become their most valuable asset. Beforehand digital marketing was a support to their offline sales and marketing efforts, but it quickly became the lynchpin. Many of our clients were able to keep operating from home due to the cloud-based business systems we had implemented, and many saw website traffic increase by 30%-60%. Luckily, for many, we'd improved the website's ability to attract new leads and convert these into enquiries, so many businesses sold as much if not more than they had before the pandemic.

What areas of your (or your clients) business have you scaled back on or changed because of the pandemic?

Many have scaled back on event attendance, and this has enabled their budgets to be refocused or for them to make savings if they wanted to. To be honest, very few of our businesses have been negatively impacted by the pandemic at present. Most are selling more than ever before, and the sales are easier. Whether this will last remains to be seen but with many New Zealander's having overseas holidays cancelled that disposable income is going on other areas.

If you could give any advice to a start-up, small or medium-size business moving forward what would it be?

Cash is key. As a small business just starting out you can live hand-to-mouth or take all your profit out as soon as possible to fund a lifestyle or repay months of earning nothing. Resist the temptation to pull too much from the business. Leave enough in there to survive as long as possible so that if something unexpected happens you have the liquidity to survive. The businesses we saw go into survival mode may have hung on by their fingertips but there's long-term damage that pivoting or switching focus will do. 

Do you have a business motto or quote?

Stick to your plan, weather the storm and save what you earn when the times are good to survive the storms that invariably come.

Jon Baker

Managing Director - Collab Hospitality

Tell us about your business and what you do?

Collab Hospitality is a collaboration that operates and manages five hospitality outlets in New Plymouth. As a management company, this allows us to hire and deploy great people, like our Executive Chef Shane and Food and Beverage Manager Stacey into sites as needed. This then allows the business partners Tia, Thanh and I to work on implementing our long term strategic growth goals. 

What areas of your business have you either kept the same or put more time/money into because of the pandemic?

Ever since we went into lockdown in March, we decided that the best way to allow our company to come out on the other side as strong as possible was to put valuable time into improving our businesses. By going over processes, invoice catchment and spending time with our senior team on looking for ways to improve and streamline our business. This meant that when the lockdown lifted, we would be better organised and better equipped to relaunch our sites and have them set up to face the challenges ahead.

What areas of your business have you scaled back on or changed because of the pandemic?

We have a lot of faith in the Taranaki economy to be resilient and bounce back better than other regions in New Zealand. Rather than scaling back our business, we have gone for a more preserving and fortifying plan that locks in the gains before we look for any new opportunities to expand in the future.

If you could give any advice to a start-up, small or medium-size business moving forward, what would it be?

Always put your customer at the centre of everything you do. Before doing or changing anything, ask yourself how this is going to benefit your customer. 

Do you have a business motto or quote?

“ Success is not final , Failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts”- Winston Churchill