There are days I wish I still had eCommerce stores, and there are days I’m glad I sold them off long ago.
Around the holidays I always get nostalgic remembering back to days leading up to Christmas. The warehouse would be buzzing with pickers racing up and down aisles pulling product, while packers scanned items going into boxes as they hurried to avoid the conveyor belt getting backed up.
I rarely spent time in my office during the holiday rush, as I would be either out helping answer phones in the customer service department, or pitching in helping the warehouse team get orders packed and loaded into the UPS trailer before pickup.
Long days, cold pizza, sore muscles, and the quest to hit a minimum 450 package goal was normal… and fun.
Then there were the days where I would sit back, look at my dogs who came to work with me every day and say to them “I’m so over this shit.”
Those days were rare, but they stand out just as much as the good ones.
Being an eCommerce store owner today is a hell of a lot harder than it was back in the late ‘90s, early 2000s. Competition today is fierce, advertising is expensive, and everyone and their cousin is selling the same thing you are.
Being an eCommerce store owner during COVID-19 has its own special set of challenges. From keeping operations open to making sure you can still get product, it’s a time where once again you need to make the rules up as you go along.
In my role at Your Store Wizards, I still get to keep my finger on the pulse of eCommerce and have the opportunity to continue to work with store owners. Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked with folks who’s sales are up more than they could ever imagine and are crazy happy for the boost in business.
I’ve also talked with those who’s business came to a grinding halt and had to lay workers off. To survive they’ve turned their business into a “one-man show” doing whatever it takes to survive.
After hearing their stories, I decided to email our clients and ask them to take a quick anonymous survey to see just how COVID-19 is impacting their business.
Some of the results were expected, like seeing what forms of advertising they were cutting back on, or their thoughts on recovery.
Some of the results were scary, such as 13% having to shut their business down temporarily. Or, 31% laying off or furloughing staff.
After seeing the results of the survey and compiling them into an infographic, I was once again split on whether or not I wanted to be a store owner again.
A part of me would love to be in the game just for the challenge of making it through another one of those eCommerce hurdles. After all, I was fortunate enough to beat a sock puppet with pockets full of cash.
But this is something different.
The face of eCommerce has changed forever thanks to COVID-19 and it’s still too early to see the lasting impacts the virus may have on an industry that so far has been resilient.
Take a moment to review the infographic with the results of the COVID-10 eCommerce Impact Survey and check out this other article I wrote with even more information about the effect coronavirus is having on online shopping.
