'A lifeline': As sales vanished amid the pandemic, here's how small businesses shifted to Amazon, Etsy to survive
At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Jean Jenner knew just what to do to save his French Bakery & Pastry Shop.
Just as evaporating sales forced him to shutter his Ormond Beach, Florida, storefront, his online gourmet flour and yeast business unexpectedly took off, effectively lighting the road to survival for his 37-year-old business.
Serendipitously, Jenner’s online side business helped fuel the bake-at-home craze that gave cooped-up Americans a creative outlet to soothe pandemic-frayed nerves. In just a few short weeks, internet sales mushroomed from about $1,000 a month to more than $1,000 a day.
Jenner built his virtual shop on Etsy, and the business has been thriving since.
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“If in January 2020 you told me that in two months’ time my shop would be selling nothing but I’d be making over $100,000 on Etsy, I’d tell you, you were nuts,” Jenner told me. “I had never even heard of Etsy.”
Like Jenner, tens of thousands of store owners watched in horror as sales vanished. And for many, they never came back. During the first six months of the pandemic, U.S. e-commerce sales jumped 40.7%, while in-store revenue fell 2.7%.
It would be easy to brush that off as an acceleration of commerce’s relentless migration to the internet. But there’s much more to it than that. The line between in-store and online is blurring, driven in part by pivot-or-perish stories like Jenner’s helping to write the playbook for mom-and-pop success in the post-pandemic era.
“Selling online can be, and has been for many, a lifeline to keep brick-and-mortar businesses afloat – especially during the pandemic,” said Keri Cusick, head of small business empowerment at Amazon. “Adding e-commerce as a channel can be a huge complement to brick-and-mortar stores.”
As it happens, the pandemic ushered in a friendlier climate for small businesses to migrate online. According to Shopify’s Future of Commerce 2021 report, 50% of consumers seek out independently owned businesses to support.
“We suddenly became more aware of the stores around us,” said Loren Padelford, VP at Shopify. “That drove a lot of behavior change.”
Of course, there’s no substitute for the right products at the right time. And these days, those are “items that bring a bit of joy during this challenging time,” said Ryan Scott, Etsy’s chief marketing officer. “We’ve invested in campaigns that have focused on human connection, acceptance, diversity and togetherness. The common thread is the power of personalized, unique items.”
In fact, “personalized gift” was the most-searched term on Etsy last year, Scott said.
How business pivots helped some bounce back
Sierra Nevada-area BlueZone Sports used to rent and sell ski equipment and other outdoor gear exclusively in its own shops. But after pandemic-driven shutdowns, the company quickly pivoted to an omnichannel approach, offering the same gear online as in stores.
In addition to adding e-commerce to its website, BlueZone also started selling on the Amazon Marketplace, which gave them an immediate injection of revenue. Before long, BlueZone recovered to the point it could reopen all six of its stores.
And, after laying off more than 80% of its workforce, the company is now back to pre-pandemic employment levels.
“What we were able to execute online dramatically changed the course of our company,” BlueZone CEO Richard Norris said. “Fifty people have jobs because of that.”
To keep her Laguna Beach, California, venture afloat, Jenny Ray developed entirely new products to sell online. She had to as her business crafting floral arrangements for weddings dried up.
So Ray followed the betrothed onto Zoom and created a whole new line of dried floral arrangements. She set up on Etsy, and the business quickly transformed from delivering hundreds of stems for dozens of local weddings to bouquets and boutonnieres for thousands of virtual unions nationwide. Her biggest problem now? “How to take some of our weekends back."
Heading into 2020, Karma Nuts’ expansion plans pointed skyward. But the pandemic sent the 6-year-old Dublin, California, company scurrying to the cloud instead.
Early last year, Karma had just inked a deal for its distinctive roasted cashews to provide in-flight snacks for a major airline. The pandemic snuffed that deal, as well as the company’s primary growth engine, handing out in-store samples.
So Ganesh Nair, Karma’s founder and CEO, decided to try to coax online buyers to sample Karma Nuts at home. It worked. The new variety snack pack quickly became Karma’s largest-selling item. Nair said that Amazon Prime members were particularly responsive to the new lower-cost selections.
Pandemic buyers treat themselves online
Before the pandemic, 100% percent of rock, fossil and gemstone sales at the Manic Mermaid in Tacoma, Washington, occurred in-store. So shuttering due to COVID-19 was a make-or-break proposition.
Co-owners Janelle Elms and Charles Cox opted for "make." With the help of Shopify, they put up an e-commerce-enabled website. And they produced daily Facebook Live events, which still generate 90% of sales.
“Our customers showed up every day because they felt connected,” Elms said. “And I think that creating those connections when people were stuck at home was so valuable.”
During the pandemic, Elms and Cox noticed that folks were buying more for themselves than for others. So they stocked up on what Elms calls “comfort items.”
“Those comfort items sold very well,” Elms said. “People very much wanted to treat themselves.”
Indeed, if there’s a common thread through all the merchants’ stories, it’s that shoppers were browsing for ways to break up the monotony of the pandemic. So they spent money on ski equipment. On gourmet bread ingredients. Tasty, healthy snacks. And rare gemstones.
Said Elms: “If a year ago, you didn’t change what your business looked like, then you’re probably out of business now.”
USA TODAY columnist Mike Feibus is president and principal analyst of FeibusTech, a Scottsdale, Arizona, market research and consulting firm. Reach him at mikef@feibustech.com. Follow him on Twitter @MikeFeibus.
The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY.
