While it is clear that hundreds of micro and small businesses across the country and seriously up against it insofar as surviving the serious decline in economic activity occasioned by the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, amongst those that the Stabroek Business has engaged, many are demonstrating an astonishing will to keep going. One of those is A& J Creative Designs, a modest mother and daughter enterprise established in October last year that has brought their home-taught culinary skills to bear, in the production of a wide range of cakes.
A&J, like most other local micro businesses derived from the proprietors’ search for options, the forward planning in this instance extending into envisaged investments in additional services including landscaping, delivery of groceries and bill payment. The story, however, for Alicia Daniels, the lead player in the A&J enterprise has, these past several months, been transformed from intense forward planning to fighting a rearguard action to hold the company together.
The market for the entity’s cakes has shrunk disastrously and while pressing on would appear to be the philosophy by which she lives Alicia is only too well aware that Covid-19 has presented them with a fight for their economic lives.
It is evident, however, that she is determined that A&J will not simply roll over and die. The important thing, she says, is to let people know “that we are still here, still in business.” The challenge, it seems, has sharpened Alicia’s appetite for marketing. So that A&J has embarked of a flurry of on-line promotion in order to ensure that customers and potential customers are aware that coronavirus notwithstanding, there are still pleasing things that can bring light to their lives.
And so they press on with their range of cakes…….black cakes, sponge cakes, fruit cakes……..the lot, fighting for the survival of their enterprise whilst bringing a ‘feel good’ dimension to a new and decidedly unwelcome normal characterized by the depressing in necessary ‘defense mechanisms’ that include face masks and social distancing.
Stabroek Business’ recent verbal exchange with Alicia found her in a thoughtful but upbeat mood mindful of both the health risks and the social upheaval which the coronavirus has brought but acutely aware that optimism and determination are among the most important weapons available with which to fight the malady. In a sense she believes that the challenge of COVID-19 has sharpened the entrepreneurial sensitivities of the company. Much time is spent planning, strategizing, probing new ways of creating demand for their products.
That said, she concedes that her own thoughts must remain in tandem with the wider circumstances so that even as she reaches out to the market for patronage she remains acutely aware of the impact that covid-19 has had on jobs, earnings and disposable incomes.
Discourses with small business owners like Alicia lead to the inescapable conclusion that interdependence is a more than viable option in these times. Lifestyle changes must of necessity include dispositional shifts that take account of the importance of linking our pursuits, our propensities to the concerns of others. In the instance of A&J and the thousands of other micro and small businesses across the country, it has become a matter of seeking them out and ensuring their survival and growth through our patronage.
