Is Your Business Thriving?
We heard “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”. The art of business also tells us there are opportunities during difficult times. But are there? And is it easy to get tougher and ride against bad times?
For all we know, Zoom’s share price went from below USD80 per share to almost USD160 per share between 31 Jan 2020 to 23 March 2020. With people asked to work from home, many turned to telecommuting and Zoom provided as a viable solution. The Guardian article said Zoom was downloaded 2.13m times around the world on 23 March, the day the lockdown was announced in the UK. So unless you are providing something like zoom, like most of other business, you are probably been affected badly by Covid-19. Therefore in the past, we talk about recession-proof industry. Now, do we have to look into pandemic-proof industry too?
If there is one take-home (from business point of view) from Covid-19, it is to learn how vulnerable our businesses are in times of a pandemic. It also shows clearly how interdependent we are on one another. Many business in the B2B and B2C space are affected. At Crunch Studio, because of our unique B2B business model, we were not affected by Covid-19.
Our Business Model
Customers want instant gratification nowadays. But businesses that do well now have to adopt a delayed-gratification business model. Save for tech giants like Uber, Grab, Airbnb, Facebook etc where they had a lot of money to burn until a point where they can start making profits, most of smaller businesses cannot afford this way of conducting business. I think the key is in identifying what is your business model. For Crunch Studio, we adopt a delayed-gratification business model. We farm for the long term.
How we differentiate ourselves is we empathise with business owners. At the same time, we are committed to our clients in the long term and we hope to grow our client’s business together. We see the relationship more like a partnership than just purely a client-vendor relationship. We have explained briefly on our packages page but let me talk about it here:
Ease Your Cash Flow
We understand business is all about cash flow. So our model wins in trying times because we help our clients with friendly payment instalments. With a small monthly commitment a month, they can own a professional website that focus on conversion. We work on a 12-18 months instalments and clients pay as little as $200 per month for a basic package. This really helps in difficult times like the Covid-19 period. Cash Flow is King in business.
Our Commitment to You
Being on an instalment package with us means we are also committed to you for that time frame. Unlike many web design and developing companies where they hand over the site and leave many site owners struggling, we hand hold you for that period. We will guide you (or your dedicated staff) to the backend of your site to edit, amend or create new contents. For that 12-18 months period, we basically takes care of all your website needs while you focus on building your business.
Long Term Partnership
Frankly, many clients thought our offer is too good to be true. In an environment that believes in instant gratification, we chose a delayed-gratification model as we believe in building this long term relationship with our client. We have our digital arm to take care of client’s digital marketing needs. Therefore we also hope clients can get to try out the other services in the long term and allow us to grow their business together. And as far as website is concerned, we want to be THE one to go to for their website needs.
What We Learned
Being in the B2B space, I think we did right to offer delayed-gratification instalment packages for our clients. This model is not easy for us because we have to manage our own cash flow carefully. We took on more business risks of clients not fulfilling their payment obligation. But because such a model helps our clients, it also helps us in the long term. It is a risk that I think we can afford to take.
Does your business model allows you to be not affected by Covid-19? Singapore will be having a technical lockdown (at least to me) next week. I think it is time to rethink and refine our business model. Crunch Studio have started to work from home weeks ago. For me, I have been thinking how to help my clients and looking into a business gap for us to fill in the next few months.
Covid-19 will be over… sooner or later. But it is what we can learn from this exercise sooner or later that is more important. Wish all to stay safe and healthy.
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