Pandemic lit candlemaker’s fire for online sales
DETROIT – Challenging times call for some ingenuity if you’re a small business owner at risk of losing everything.
One Detroit baker sent her pies to celebrities to try to expand her reach and find new customers. Their posts about the pies on Instagram eventually landed her on a very important online list.
Meanwhile, a Detroit inventor turned to a website he generally avoided, Amazon.com, to sell a mobile desk he invented just before the world shut down.
Many small business owners have created or invested in online presence to save their businesses during the pandemic.
They are doing this because state restrictions on businesses aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19 limited the capacity at retail businesses at no more than 50%. With limited foot traffic, they had to turn to social media or selling online to make up for lost sales.
Even so, a report on small businesses, by Facebook and released Thursday, said small businesses still are struggling.
A majority of the small businesses surveyed globally reported that sales in February were lower than in the same month last year, Facebook’s Global State of Small Business Report concluded.
But the report, based on a survey of 35,000 small business leaders across 27 countries and territories in February, also found more than three-quarters of U.S. respondents were confident in their ability to keep operating for six months, even if current circumstances persist, indicating that they have found a way to keep the doors open even with fewer in-store sales.
Inspired by a paint can
At age 17, Detroit native Orlando Robinson entered the U.S. Marine Corps, becoming a sergeant within two years. After being honorably discharged, he came back to Detroit to sell real estate.
His fiancée at the time was killed in a car accident, and shortly after her death, he invented a product that prevents the driver of the car from taking the vehicle out of park unless every passenger’s seat belt is on.
Robinson also invented a product that helps secure homes, after dealing with break-ins as a part of his real estate business.
And most recently, when he was traveling around to different job sites as a general contractor, he often found himself sitting on a 5-gallon paint can with his laptop on his lap.
So he invented a mobile desk that can be folded into what looks like a laptop case. Robinson invented MoDesk just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
A retail storefront is where he’d typically plan to sell his product because preCOVID-19, Robinson didn’t do much online shopping. But now he’s selling MoDesk exclusively on Amazon.com and has no immediate plans to sell it in stores.
“It’s like the opposite side of a coin,” Robinson said. “It’s just completely different than what I was used to.”
Before the pandemic, Robinson only shopped on websites like Amazon for specialty items he couldn’t find in stores. But now he buys mostly everything but his groceries online.
“If I’m traditional, old school and I’m doing it, then I know it’s the way that the world is going,” he said. “You can get on board or you can sit by the wayside and watch life pass you by. So we decided to get on board.”
A little help from Oprah
Jennifer Lyle, owner of Lush Yummies Pie Co. in Detroit, is confident she’ll be able to stay open, but that wasn’t always the case. At the start of the pandemic, Lyle shut down her business for about two months and had to lay off the majority of her staff.
Since launching her business in 2017, Lyle mostly sold her pies on Saturdays at Eastern Market in Detroit, at other farmers’ markets and at events in the area.
She had started selling wholesale to grocery stores, but some had cut their budgets in the pandemic and focused on buying more essential items.
But Lyle took an unusual approach. She started sending pies to celebrities, who would then order more pies to send to their friends. Eventually, the pie made its way to Oprah Winfrey, who added it to her influential “Favorite Things” list in November.
“We just thought, what would be the fastest thing that we could do to get us out of this rut?” she said. “Celebrities have a lot of pull and they know a lot of people that have a lot of exposure.”
That celebrity exposure led to an increase in direct-to-consumer online sales, with Lyle shipping the pies across the U.S.
‘I’ve got to get this more visible’
Janet Abdenour Dabney, owner of Jamcat Candles in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, found herself in a tough spot when gatherings were prohibited under the state’s stay home order.
Dabney doesn’t have a storefront and mostly sold her candles through local events, which offered her the opportunity to explain the difference between soy and some other wax candles and show how her candles can be used as home decor.
In 2019, she participated in 22 events. Last year, that dropped to four.
“I was always more busy promoting myself than promoting my website,” Dabney said. “So I had very few website sales in 2018 and 2019. And I thought, I’ve got to get this more visible.”
Dabney started taking free classes online, listening to business podcasts and joining Facebook groups to learn how to get consumers to find her website and build a presence on Instagram.
“I have to do so many different things other than just pray that someone finds my website,” she said. “I was willing to learn and willing to invest in myself to figure out what can I do to get myself to a different level.”
She saw results quickly. Her website sales increased by more than 2,000% in 2020 compared with the year prior, with sales coming in from as far as Nevada.
“I think a lot of people are going to be more comfortable shopping online,” Dabney said. “Some people might still choose to use online shopping as their first mode of gift-giving or shopping” even after the pandemic is over.