Mini Episode: The 21 Hats Business Owners Make Coronavirus Contingency Plans

[Music] hello everyone welcome to a 21 hats Special Report I'm Lauren Feldman your host with health and economic concerns about the coronavirus pandemic Rising we thought we'd do a quick update with this week's 21 hats podcast Team Karen Clark Cole Jay go and Dana White in this mini episode we talk about how the pandemic has already affected their businesses and what contingency plans they're making of course we will continue to publish our regularly scheduled full episodes every Tuesday but for now here's what Karen Jay and Dana had to say about the looming pandemic let's meet this week's 21 hats podcast lineup back with us today are Karen Clark Cole who is CEO of blink a user experienced research and design firm based in Seattle Jay gz who has several businesses in Chicago including a picture frame shop artist frame service and a home furnishing store Jason home and Dana White who's founder of paral Boyd chain of hair salons based in Detroit we didn't really plan to talk about this but I feel we need to address the elephant in the room and that's uh all the news that's come out in the last couple of days about the spread of the Corona virus we had an item in today's uh 21 hats morning report about how small businesses in China are are really fighting for their lives uh could that possibly happen here uh also Facebook just canceled its annual developer conference which was scheduled for San Jose in early May uh that's a big deal they had I think something like 5,000 people there last year um and uh on top of that Americans apparently are now reluctant to order Corona beer in public because of the Corona virus uh believe it or not I'm I'm curious how about the three of you has this started to uh affect your businesses are you thinking about uh contingency plans Karen how about you yes we are just starting to develop our plan now so some of our researchers travel around the world interviewing our clients customers and so you know we're not going to the obvious places like Italy and China right now but um we're developing a a broader plan um should that affect us nationally or you know um some of the other places that we're going and then also some of our clients are postponing projects that would take us to um other places even within the US where there's U people coming here similar to what you heard with Facebook have you seen any change in uh orders for business are are are people pulling back at all from things they uh just one and that's Facebook so far um and that was for research happening in Japan right now I don't expect it to affect us very much because that's a really small portion of our business overall we've got a lot of variety and diversity in our clients um and you know most of our work is happening here in the US so but you know who knows if it if it keeps going Dana how about you you have a retail business you a hair salon you have uh employees who who actually touch your customers uh is this something you're thinking about absolutely we um are meeting on Monday to go over not only our weekly stuff but to go over how do we stay protected and P boy from exposure potential exposure to the Corona virus and I think you know the state of Michigan already has um standards by which we have to perform so we're constantly sanitizing anyway um barbicide alcohol um between each Gest the chairs the bowls the brushes all the tools so um we're just going to encourage our staff to wash your hands more um Lysol the front door where that door handle is because pretty much everything is already pretty disinfected within the salon and and things that especially those things that come in touch in contact with um our guest so have you had any concerns yet that business might get softer because of this I have and that's what we're going to talk about on Mond day um we're coming out of our slow season now and so I don't want it to be extended due to this um it may not be up to you Dana I know right it we'll see I think um I know that within the salon it's going to be you know clean and we're going to do our best for our staff we're going to let them know if you're feeling any of these symptoms do not come to work please stay at home until you're cleared to come back to work which we kind of already have in place anyway because there's so much interaction with so many people so Jay how about you uh we go to Italy twice a year to buy picture frame holding and I'm thinking we're probably going to cancel the trip for two reasons one is I just read that Northern Italy is really they're shutting down religious institutions and all kinds of places they don't want any you know crowds together and two I got to assume business is going to get a little soft so I have got lots of inventory and I know first thing you do is watch your cash so I'm going to work inventory down a little bit save some cash when would you normally uh have gone to Italy if you were still going to go we would have gone probably in uh April and it's not an emergency I you know we bring in new stuff for the you know fall but um I can easily put that off when will you make the decision or have you already made it I might have just made it two minutes ago I I just I coming in on the radio this morning I heard that you know how how difficult things are getting so I'm going to call my guy that goes there and see if and compare notes but I it's just not that necessary and I don't know that we need to be uh both spending the money and uh going over there so it's still early in the game I just have to remind everybody that that that bird flu that was supposed to come here never got here so I'm not downplaying this at all I'm just going this might be a lot of Hysteria who knows it's there probably coming here no question but I don't know that it's going to like take over the country and shut everything down I well it's already here right but it doesn't mean it's going to shut all our businesses down I you know and so I just heard this morning actually just sort of hot off the press there's two more of our our large clients who are stopping travel for all employees and so we've had we have a big Conference next week and Intel has asked to refund all of their people because they're asking everyone to stop traveling um and then another one um in Asia that's uh that's stopping work and and then there's a couple of others who are worried about supply chain issues so they're reducing their uh spending I mean keep in mind the Facebook thing they're International developers were coming here so you'd think that would be the first thing they would cancel because they're coming from all these country so picture framing isn't uh that big Believe It or Not Karen does it make a difference to you that you're in Seattle obviously there's a lot of travel between Asia and Seattle yeah I I tell you it's it's crazy when you're in the airport um you can see it for sure because of that I flew internationally last month and I when I came back in um it looked a little scary but but um I I haven't heard you know I'm not looking at it like that for our business I'm just looking at our clients who are large International clients they're making broad policies that will affect us okay well obviously this is something that we'll uh keep talking about as uh as time passes uh hopefully uh there will not be the kind of impact that uh we are concerned about but obviously it makes sense to have contingency plans and to be thinking about what could possibly happen thanks for listening everyone on Tuesday March 3rd we will publish part two of our special live taping of the 21 hats podcast with special guest Brian canas who tells the traumatic story of what happened when he and his brother took over their third generation restaurant from their parents it did not go well at least not initially you don't want to miss this one this mini episode of the 21 hats podcast was produced by Jess dubron founder of blank word Productions and 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