Small Businesses Find Advantages When Adapting to COVID-19

Small businesses in Athens, Georgia face many obstacles when adapting to COVID-19 protocols. However, flexibility of smaller businesses outweighs the benefits that larger corporations have.

Small businesses can create very personalized relationships with their customers, and are extremely adaptable, which is something corporations lack, especially during a global pandemic.

Owner of the locally-owned business University Spirits, Laura Beaghan said she loves running a small business and believes it is an advantage in the business world.

“I would say just because we are small, we have the ability to be more in tune with what’s going on in our town on campus and in the greek community,” said Beaghan.

David Stob of the UGA small business development center said smaller businesses have handled the pandemic by creating personalized relationships with customers and adapting their marketing tactics.

“If they did nothing, and just waited it out, [they’d probably no longer be there]…so they had to be creative, you had to be inventive, you had to think of ways,” said Stob.

Fred Ballard is a small business executive with The Link Companies. He said his small business is adaptable to change and has an advantage by being so adaptable.

“When you’re a smaller locally owned business, you have to wear so many different hats. You can’t delegate challenges or certain tasks to another department. But on the other hand, it’s maybe an advantage to be a local company, because you can be dynamic. And you can act quickly,” said Ballard

Ballard explained that being a smaller business, allows the business the ability to adapt easily. Considering this ease, most small businesses, like his own, have successfully adapted marketing tactics to survive the pandemic.

“There’s several ways through surviving the pandemic. The ones who don’t survive are not pivoting and changing rapidly enough to accommodate their customers,” said Stob. “So for instance the restaurants needed to curbside and open up their drive-thru, or put a drive-thru in to survive,” said Stob.

Stob is confident that small businesses have the ability to change the way they draw in business during the pandemic, it just might take some time and effort.

Successful small businesses in Athens, Georgia have adapted to the pandemic and created marketing tactics to draw in customers in distinctive ways that corporations haven’t. Despite hard times economically, if these businesses have pivoted, business is still booming.