11 minute read
How Oregon Small Businesses Pivoted to Survive the Pandemic
Premier Pivots
Oregon’s small business smarts, savvy and serendipity in surviving the pandemic’s attack on the economy
written by Kevin Max
illustrations by Allison Bye
By the time March ended, the pandemic had landed squarely on the doorstep of every Oregonian. People were forced to stay home, offices emptied, and businesses closed in hopes of reopening before the money ran out. Small businesses make up nearly all businesses in Oregon and nearly 780,000 jobs, according to the Small Business Administration. Businesses everywhere faced a new reality—change or die.
In the following pages, we look at some dramatic and courageous pivots small business owners across many sectors made to save their businesses and livelihood.
The show must go on(line)
Will Adler sat uncomfortably for ten days as shipping vessels with some of his products from a partnership with Nike sat delayed at the port of Long Beach, California. Imports and container ships were halted as the country tried to right itself in a gathering storm of Covid.
That delay forced Will Leather Goods to delay its own shipments and postponed the corresponding revenue. Further, because of a trade imbalance between the United States and China, China faces a container shortage, having sent more to the U.S. than returned with goods from the U.S.
Just days before, however, Will Leather Goods was the kind of experiential brand where people would saunter in off the street, drawn by a dramatic display and the scent of well-cut leather. A one-time actor, Adler knew his audience. Customer service was an art form and customers around the world were treated to a coffee or kombucha while they gazed upon leather goods made in Eugene, Oregon. Every stitch was quality.
Shortly into 2020, the pandemic played the role of thief for many lives, for social interactions and for retail businesses. Will Leather Goods furloughed sixty of ninety employees and closed five retail stores in cities around the globe. People turned to shopping online.
“When Covid hit, no one was shopping any more,” said Adler. “Of course, the brand doesn’t have Covid, so we started to make our internet site look more like our stores, more experiential.” Adler hired a talented photographer to help tell the visual story online and to integrate the company’s social media. “Honestly it’s not my forte. Now we have put the focus on talking about the brand online and starting to learn SEO and Google analytics. It’s a whole other world.”
Even as the company struggled, Adler transformed his signature program of giving free backpacks to underserved kids into giving meals to underserved kids and their families in Lane County.
Over the past year, Adler has had time for internal reflection. “It’s almost like Buddhist philosophy—you don’t really know what’s going to happen when you wake up in the morning. … You can’t expect anything to be the way it’s going to be. To be in the moment, that’s really all there is. There’s a joy of being in the moment. One step at a time.”
Adler sees a day soon when his background in the movie business will again create a grand retail experience. “I think there’s going to be a time when people will come back vaccinated, and there will be an excitement for shopping again.”
A craft distiller learns a new craft
Most of Brad Irwin’s business is measured four years in the future. Oregon Spirit Distillers is in the business of the patient production of craft whiskey and rum.
Before the pandemic hit, the eleven-year-old maker of distilled spirits was ramping up to double production. The small business had twenty employees and, Irwin noted, some of them had been there for two or three years, a sign of a growing business. He had a full schedule of summer musical acts lined up for their intimate outdoor setting. The company was bolstered by good signs, and began to distribute and sell nationally, including eighteen states. Oregon was no longer their only market, it was one of many.
“We were seeing every drop we made sold,” said Irwin. “We had just bought new equipment that would allow us to double our production. That really strapped us.”
When Covid began, distilleries were in a precarious position. The governor ordered all but “essential” business closed, without clearly defining which were considered essential. (One could reasonably argue that distilleries performed an essential service during a period of gloom.) At that time, a confidante of Irwin’s called him and told him to pivot into making hand sanitizer, an undisputed essential during the early days of the pandemic. “Hand sanitizer and toilet paper were the only essential things,” said Irwin. “Whiskey was a distant third.”
Overnight, Irwin taught himself how to make hand sanitizer by leveraging his experience as a distiller. That was Saturday. “By Monday morning, there was a line outside of our door,” he recalled. He rehired the people he had laid off only the day before and brought on other laid off workers from nearby Deschutes Brewery.
Eventually Oregon Health Authority got involved, and the whiskey distillers were making hand sanitizer in two daily shifts, six days per week for hospitals and clinics. Every other day, Irwin’s crew would fill another semi-trailer and send it on to medical facilities.
“It was a pretty amazing time,” Irwin said. “Especially during the beginning of Covid, everyone was terrified. It kept our business alive at a time when many others weren’t making it. We ended up producing 330,000 eight-ounce bottles.”
They had excess and began giving it away to anyone who brought their own container to their facility in Bend. He gave cases of hand sanitizer to those in the local restaurant industry.
At the same time, consumers of Irwin’s premium whiskey dropped off by more than a quarter. “We saw people stepping down a shelf,” he noted.
Irwin said that going forward, he will work to save more funds for unforeseen disruptions. “We got lucky because we could bridge the gap with hand sanitizer sales. If it would have been an earthquake, we would have had no answer,” he said.
Ultimately, he said, the lesson he is taking from the past year is how important social gatherings are for people. “When I see what my daughter missed from not attending school, it is not the education but the contact with friends that she lost. I won’t take that for granted again.”
A tour operator in Garibaldi finds a broader audience in video
Before the pandemic, Amanda Gladics taught people about Oregon fisheries through tours on the docks in Garibaldi. Gladics, assistant professor of practice at Oregon State University Coastal Fisheries Extension, would meet the typical group of fifteen guests at The Shop, where local fish are fileted and sold, and she’d take them down to the docks to the fishing boats and introduce them to the captains and fishermen and women selling their catch. She’d lead them through the dock’s processing facility and end with a stop at Garibaldi Bistro for a seafood tasting—all part of a hands-on educational segment called Shop at the Dock.
“We teach people how to buy fish directly from the dock,” said Gladics. “If you’ve never done it before, it can be intimidating.”
Through the OSU Extension Service and other local partners, Shop at the Dock offered two tours per day throughout the year. Then came March 2020 and Covid, just when the program was getting underway for the season.
Local restaurants, the chief source of revenue for local fishers, were forced closed due to the spreading pandemic.
Visitors, who once filled Gladics’ tours, were hunkered down in their homes. Shop at the Dock was a tour without tourists.
“It was very clear that bringing people together wasn’t the right thing to do.” Gladics said. “We could just cancel and do nothing, but that didn’t feel right either.” Along with her local partners, Gladics thought about how they could connect curious people with the coastal fisheries and businesses. “We came up with the idea of doing little videos, and I would edit them and post them on Facebook to see what happens,” she recalled. “The response was amazing!”
The first video reached 18,000 people and garnered several hundred responses. Nearly 6,000 viewers saw at least part of the video, reaching magnitudes more people than her tour would in a year.
“To me, there were some good lessons in finding something you can do and getting creative,” she said. “I still think there’s a lot of value with the depth of learning with in-person experience, but when you can’t, this is a nice alternative.”
A sentimental brewer channels a nostalgic drive-thru
At the beginning of 2020, the iconic Old Town Brewery operated two locations—one in downtown Portland and the other, a hip remodel of a 1940s car dealership on Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard in NE Portland. Things were going pretty well, Old Town Brewery owner, Adam Milne, recalled.
Once the pandemic hit, restaurants and pubs were the first ordered closed. “That was a shock to people, and people were nervous about going out in public,” said Milne.
Old Town Brewery was Milne’s passion project since he launched it eighteen years before. As a kid, he loved Old Town Pizza. As an adult, he saw the last Old Town Pizza go up for sale and, seized by nostalgia, bought it.
When pubs and breweries closed overnight, Milne circled his team and started asking what they could do in conjunction with other local brewers. “We were just in shock trying to keep the public safe and our employees safe, and if it was going to last for a while, how could we survive?” Milne said. “We came up with a hybrid farmers’ market and drive-thru meets a beer festival.”
Seven breweries and one cider maker set up tents along a path and people would slowly drive through and shop from their cars with an app and talk to brewers as needed. At the end of the drive-thru, pickers would pick the orders and runners would run them out to customers. “People could do something different and get out of their houses,” observed Milne. “There was also a great camaraderie among brewers.”
Perhaps this act of creativity and collective good will be just enough to get Old Town and other brewers through the worst of the scourge. “We’re just waiting for the vaccine to come out, and things will look up,” said Milne.
In the meantime, Old Town’s northeast brewpub has twenty outdoor picnic tables and roll-up garage doors in a spacious setting with high ceilings.
Hardship followed Milne into the year, but an important sentiment pulled him through. “People genuinely want to help one another, and this is something that affected everyone,” he said. “Brewers that compete on the shelf came together in real life to help one another.”
A Southern Oregon hotel pivots in two faces of hell
For Ashland Hills Hotel & Suites, 2020 was shaping up to be its best year. The Mid-century Modern marvel in Southern Oregon saw conferences, tour groups, weddings and record levels of occupancy in its projections. As February faded to March, however, so, too, did their hopes of a breakout year.
“The panic and fear of the unknown definitely hit us all— from management, to people who planned to stay in our hotel,” said Karolina Lavagnino, director of sales and marketing. “We had to refund hundreds if not thousands of deposits, which impacted our cash flow.”
All of the conferences, the meetings, the tour groups and weddings were canceled. No guests were coming. Revenue died overnight. Ashland Hills Hotel was forced to furlough many of its employees and close its restaurant while it contemplated its future. Managers deliberated, then put strict Covid protocols into place and reopened to a shuttered and timid public. They began to court their loyal customers with credits for future stays and gift cards to support the restaurant.
The real pivot began when the hotel management decided to convert some of their suites into short-term apartments with kitchenettes and thirty-day minimum stays. “People were escaping largely populated areas and looking for small-town safety,” said Lavagnino. “We reimagined our marketing, focusing on the great outdoors and the adventures awaiting in Southern Oregon. Wine and culinary attractions were also a huge pull.”
Their restaurant began to offer takeout, delivery and room service—even take-and-bake meals and gift boxes.
In Southern Oregon, the pandemic was only one curse last year. In early September, the Alameda Fire swept through Ashland and other Southern Oregon towns in a 9-mile inferno. Thousands of homes and structures were burned to the ground. Hundreds of families were displaced and struggled. The iconic Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland’s economic engine, canceled its season while it tried to understand the future of stage productions during a pandemic. Ashland Hills Hotel and Neuman Group’s other local hotel properties partnered with local organizations to send business into the economically hobbled downtown.
Throughout the past year, Lavagnino has learned to distrust a booming economy. “You have to remain agile and open to pivoting as needed,” she said. “Invest in your hotels to attract new, younger travelers eager to do road trips, in our case, to Southern Oregon.”
