Starting a small business is hard but, imagine starting one in a pandemic. How hard could it actually be?
Dan Kokiw and his brother Jamie are now the new proud owners of Dietrich’s meat and marketplace down in Oakville. Dan explains how this all came to be.
Listen or Read Dan’s comments bellow
Audio Player” It’s a little complicated. My brother and I started a online butcher business a year ago, and since we started, we were always looking for a place to actually do our butchering properly.
We weren’t really necessarily looking for a storefront. We were looking for a location that we could set up and get things going so we can do the butchery properly.
While we were looking, we found out that the owner of Dietrich’s, the new owner of Dietrich’s was looking to sell, and since this is a place that my brother and I had been going to since we were young, it seemed like a really good fit”.
Next, Dan talked about some of the challenges that they had faced and overcame in their new business.
Listen or Read Dan’s comment bellow
Audio Player“The biggest thing we ran into when we first purchased this business was for the last 20, some odd years, they would close down from January until March 20th, because they could.
When we took over, we had to do a lot of cleaning, fixing up, basically putting our stamp on the business making it our own.
By doing that, you know, we took a month and it was a lot of prepping, cleaning, and what not. But, it was a lot of hard work, but well worth it.”
Here is another challenge Dan and Jamie overcame
Audio Player“But, then one of the big problems was is that when we opened up in February, which is a month and a half earlier than they normally would.
How do we get the traffic through the door? How do we get the people to know that we’re open? What we did to overcome that is my brother is an online Guru. He knows how to get people to websites. He’s into social media really, really heavily.
So, we used social media and email to be able to get people first to on our, on our site, knowing that we’re open getting them into the, into the business. Then we used print ads into the local papers, to let people know that there’s new management and that we are open.
So come on down, you know, come and check out what we have done.”
Next, I talk to Kristen Duever, who is the vice president of the London Chamber of Commerce. She explained to me some of the challenges that London businesses are facing.
Listen or Read Kristen’s comments bellow
Audio Player“Well, a lot of businesses are really still struggling with the economic impacts that the pandemic had on them, whether that was locked downs or dropping consumer confidence things like that.
They’re still facing issues with consumer confidence during the pandemic, people got very used to, making their purchases online and doing a lot of things online.
So, businesses need to make sure that they have the tools to accommodate those new behaviors.
They’re not new behaviors, but they’re new to a lot of people and they’ve dramatically increased throughout the last two years.”
Next, she explained to me how London is helping support small businesses during this time.
Listen or Read Kristen’s comments bellow
Audio Player“Well, I know that the city has a coalition of organizations that make up the London business recovery network, and they’ve put together a lot of proposals and are working on a lot of activities to help with that for the London chamber of commerce itself.
We are doing our best to provide resources to business, um, pointing them out to where they can get government grants, helping them with networking and just being a general resource where businesses can come together to get the support resources and professional development that they need.”
If you’ve owned a small business these last 2 years you must have faced many new challenges. But, just remember that London Is ready to help if you need it.
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