Your immune system is less than stellar and you cannot thank your customers enough for helping protect your health. Their care means the world to you and you are more determined now to spend the rest of your life making your local used bookshop a fascinating, comfortable place for your friends, your family, and your customers.
The past 6 months was a crazy whirlwind of activity as you scrambled to adapt to a new platform. Thanks to the support of your customers, your business is still here. This week, you are pushing to transition out of triage and into a new covid-conscious business model.
You still remain closed to walk-ins, but the shopping by appointment platform is working. You have sometimes been able to let people in without appointments if you have room in the store.
Your most recent goal now is to whip the store back into shape, reclaim the floor space, and create new work spaces that are not in the retail space where you can do your work while others are in the store.
The most engaging project for you has been working in one of the overstock rooms. This space also serves as your shipping area and now contains all the supplies you need to create your new, and very popular, Book Bag Care Packages and Book Bundles. Right now it is late and it has been a long day, but all this attention to detail and the color from the wrapping supplies and the book covers make you ridiculously happy. The oldest cat in the store remains your helper, which is fun, but it is time to call it a night.
You will get up and start again tomorrow to make changes and alterations to these behind the scene spaces and you will continue to staff the shop Wednesday through Saturday from noon until 6:00 pm. You continue to encourage your customers to call to schedule some book shopping time or take a chance and stop by if they are in the area. All of your customers are required to wear their masks. In addition, you give all of the customers gloves to wear while they are in the store and you take a quick temp with a forehead-swipe thermometer. After that, the customers can free range around the bookstore to their heart’s content.
While you are working on the cosmetic and aesthetic parts of the job, your husband is finding the exact miniature screws needed that are needed to make the carpentry details that need to be addressed. With his inventory of stainless steel screws, micro fasteners, and other products from different kinds of screw manufacturers, he is taking these few days a week when the shop is closed to attend to the details that he can master.
What Are You Doing to Improve Your Business During the Pandemic
If you are a small business owner who has used this time to make cosmetic, structural, or other kinds of details to your company then you are not alone. It is for this reason that screw manufacturers, contractors, and electricians are more busy than ever before. In fact, there are many kinds of goods and services that, at times, seem as difficult to get ahold of as toilet paper was in March. Fortunately, screw manufacturers and other kinds of production companies are doing everything within their power to make sure that they are amping up their assembly lines to meet the demand of the many commercial and residential projects that are being tackled during these difficult times.
Taking just this one production industry as an example, the revenue from nut, bolt, and screw manufacturers in the U.S. reached $30 billion in year 2017, and the industry as a whole employs 131,949 people. Knowing that the combination of some home manufacturing plants and small businesses like book stores continue, provides some hope to an economy of a nation that is struggling. Are you finding the best way to deal with the economic challenges of this health crisis? Retrofitting your business space may be the first step in surviving the pandemic and being ready for the next few months.