Coronavirus & Clutches: Navigating a Business Through the Chaos

January 2020 was our best month to date. Though most of my business is in wholesale, we don’t exhibit at a lot of trade shows, but this season I decided to invest in exhibiting during the January gift, home and fashion market at AmericasMart Atlanta. Over the course of one week, we picked up over 40 accounts and wrote so many orders that our heads were spinning.

Once we settled back in Brooklyn, ready to fulfill these orders, we checked in with our zipper supplier. The start of the year is always a little tricky when dealing with the supply chain (factories for fabric, zippers, tags, trim, labels; i.e. all of our supplies). Chinese New Year closes factories in China for weeks, and in the world of overseas shipping, CNY translates to delays nearing a month.

Now, I know that and have dealt with that in the past, and because of that, always make sure I’ve ordered extra zippers/supplies to carry us through February, just in case. We started hearing about a virus in China that was delaying the factories from opening in time, but we were confident things would only be delayed a week or so.

The influx in orders this past January was great for cash flow, as we needed a lot of capital to purchase supplies to fulfill these orders. My seamstresses were double booked and everyone was working around the clock for weeks and weeks — and then it stopped.

All of a sudden, in March, I started counting the number of zippers we had left, and it wasn’t much. We checked with our suppliers, factories were starting to open but orders were delayed. We started rationing them towards select orders while putting others on delay. As the weeks passed, I realized that if we don’t have the ability to ship these remaining orders that need zippers, we won’t get paid. My seamstresses were working on what they could, but there were barely any supplies to make the products that my company was known for. Then COVID19 came to New York.

Once the order came down from Governor Cuomo, all non-essential businesses must close, that was it. I had two of my employees get their final hours in on that final Sunday and I began working from home. After checking in with our suppliers, we realized there wasn’t going to be anything to ship until our zippers came over from China. Until non-essential businesses were opened, we weren’t going to be shipping anything and we had no supplies to finish fulfilling the orders that we did have. All of our stores, or their distribution centers, were closed, so even if we had our supplies, there was nowhere to ship them.

When you’ve spent over a decade building a brand, having something like this come out of nowhere to blindside your business and decimate your sales, truly makes you feel sick, and also makes you feel kind of crazy to not know how to navigate a business that you built when things are so out of anyone’s control.

It feels strange to market a product that is undoubtedly frivolous and utterly fun during such a scary and serious time, but that is what has always made my brand so special. I’ve been told over and over again that my designs have always made my customer smile, and that is what we will continue to do in trying times.

Transparency is key in this time, because as alone as I feel as the sole owner of my business, I know that we are all in this strange period together. If we can all stay positive and healthy, I am sure that we will get through this, and my business will get through it with savings, stimulus packages and sales from you! We are currently accepting orders and offering free shipping through this pandemic (click here!) and if people are able to wait until we are on the other side of this, once we receive our supplies, we will literally be back in business.

I love working. I love going to my office, creating and shipping to you. Not doing that makes me feel like I am not myself, and that has truly been the hardest part of the last month for me. I am excited for what 2021 holds and am going to plan for the future of my business during this time as if there isn’t a big asterisk over the future of the world we know it!