As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to unfold, many businesses are struggling to keep their heads afloat. These businesses and individuals lie at the heart of our vibrant communities. Now, it is more important than ever to come together and support our local businesses.
Practicing self-quarantine remains a crucial guideline for assisting to alleviate the disease, but this doesn't necessarily mean you cannot support your local businesses. No, we are not encouraging you to leave the house. There are ways to do this from the comfort of your own home, really!
We sat down with Diem Tran (virtually, of course) from
Street Sound & Vision
for a video-conference to discuss the different ways his business has creatively adjusted to adapt to the new restrictions.
What does supporting local businesses mean to you in the current social isolation environment?
Supporting local businesses during this current isolation environment is fundamental to me and my business. This means to help keep our community in business, support them by purchasing as usual. If your situation allows you to, help to promote their business. Write a review, post a nice comment, tell your friends and most importantly:
Stay Home. Respect your local businesses and try to find a way to support them from home. Local businesses are braving the current situation to keep our community alive. In return, help them and their families by staying home. If you have to come in-store, respect the rules put in place – stand behind the lines, keep your distances and respect the customer limitations.
What have you had to change to be able to service your clients?
As expected, we have increased our cleaning procedures to ensure it is the safest environment for our customers and our staff as they work on our clients’ vehicles.
In terms of retail, we’ve asked our clients to divert their enquiries completely to social media platforms and phone calls. We are also increasing our sales and product lines online so our customers don’t need to risk their health to be provided our services.
What kind of support has been helpful during this process?
The best support we could ask for is the communities' support. The support from our suppliers and customers has been embraced by us, it’s helped us to keep our business up and running.
We’ve appreciated every like, share, tag & comment on our photos to help us during this time as it has helped to increase the community's knowledge our business and inform clients that we are still open for business during this time.
What kind of online shopping environment creates a sense of community and is that important when buying local?
For us, it’s the Facebook and Instagram posts we pride ourselves on. By using these platforms, we have created a space where we can interact with our community directly, answer their enquiries and help them with their needs but also give our customers a space to speak to each other and share with one another.
It’s the personalised experience we can provide to our community that is most important. Creating this online shopping environment is important when buying local. It shows that you are involved, that you have an interest in joining the community yourself as a business and that you are willing to adjust as the community changes. This is an experience that you wouldn’t be able to provide purely by selling through your website and we think our community appreciates that.
Thank you to Diem and the team for braving these extraordinary circumstances to continue providing for the community with their services. To get in touch with Diem or the team at Street Sound & Vision, visit their website here.
If you want to chat to us about how you can make changes to have your business comply with the current guidelines, please give us a call.
From our team at Forty-Four Degrees, we hope that everyone is staying safe during this difficult time. And don’t forget to support your local businesses. Together, we are stronger.
Leila Chalk
is a lawyer and business advisor at Forty Four Degrees.
