Traveller, author, entrepreneur and sustainable lifestyle advocate Chit Juan talks about the transition of her business to digital platform during this year
I have always been a retailer, with brick and mortar stores or storefronts as we call them so just imagine how the pandemic threw me off balance. But instead of curling up under the sheets and wishing the nightmare to end, I braced myself. This is it! Bite the bullet! Do what needs to be done.
My ECHOstore partners and I saw what was to come next: store closures. We had to move fast as many of our goods have expiry dates and we had cafes with fresh stocks of food, too. A lot of judgment calls were needed. Throw this. Give these away. Clean the warehouse. Move it closer to point of use. Before the lockdown, I asked a supply chain expert about managing inventory. He summed it all up in one word: optimise! And optimise we did, one item at a time.
It was also good that we prepared our digital workforce, all virtual service providers. We started to use our online store and kept just one stand-alone store as our hub. There was no back office and all my supervisors could only work from home. I looked at costs and what we could possibly sell online. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work, from home. I found myself doing the tasks of a warehouse clerk, dispatcher, scheduler and salesperson. Talk about multi-tasking. It was a true test of grit, patience and faith.