For Mitzi Turnquest, the proprietor of the Signature Group of Companies – which consists of four apparel boutiques – closing her business in the face of uncertainty is nothing new.
After having to shutter her business for a full year during the 2011 New Providence Road Improvement Project, Turnquest said she knows what perseverance in the face of adversity means.
But the 18-year business veteran said she was still shocked by how significantly and how suddenly the prime minister’s announcement of the public state of emergency and resulting 24-hour lockdown of all non-essential businesses would impact her.
“For me it has impacted me immensely. We didn’t get to just slow down, we had to stop our operation completely. So literally, when you still have a lot of overhead going on, you literally have no income coming in – period. You have families affected by it, you have employees affected by it. Really and truly you can’t take a personal approach to it because it’s happening to everyone at this time,” she said.
“It’s not a cry to say, ‘Why me?’; everyone is going through this. I think for small businesses, especially those of us in beauty and retail, this is affecting us the most because we don’t sell necessities or things that are essential, so I think we will be affected by this more than anybody else.”
Turnquest is like thousands of small business owners throughout the country trying to come to terms with the new reality of commerce in a COVID-19 world.
She said with calls for social distancing expected to continue well beyond the current period of a closed economy, she has had to reconsider how she does business moving forward.
“A lot of people are talking about an online presence and even though I love the prospect of people being able to shop and coming in to feel and touch before they purchase, that may not be feasible in this market moving forward. The prospect of having to create that concept online, may have to be something I eventually look at,” Turnquest said in a telephone interview with Guardian Business.
“I know that it’s not going to be easy. One of the advantages of doing this for 18 years is in 2011 I had to go through a year of being closed because of the road closures, so I had to be shut down for an entire year and continued to pay overhead at that time. So being in a situation like this is not new to me, it’s just another time that I have to see it through… But the goal will continue to be to offer an amazing boutique to my Bahamian people.”
Turnquest said she is depending on the financial assistance the government has offered to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), like its Business Continuity Program, to stay afloat; but she has seen little headway in that regard.
“Literally, I think I was one of the first ones on the line applying for some financial assistance, but nothing has come to fruition as yet,” she said.
“As it relates to my staff, what I did was an emergency vacation for them. I made sure I paid them vacation, giving them the opportunity to be paid days owed if there was any owed to them in addition to that. Then I filled out their application forms myself and walked them in to make sure they got the assistance that they needed. So that was done from the front. I made sure to put them on as temporary laid off, so that they could have been getting something in at this time, because I did foresee that this is going to be a bit of a ride, it’s not going to be a two or three-week turnaround.”
Turnquest said it’s incumbent upon the small business community to support and take care of one another.
“These are your mom and pop stores, this is such a hard time for so many of us small businesses. Most of us don’t have that financial backing that a corporation or a big business might have,” she said.
“Something I want to encourage most of us to do is to try to help support each other and do what we can to keep afloat and just keep pressing on and don’t give up. That’s all we can do in this season.”
The post COVID-19 small business profile: Signature Styles appeared first on The Nassau Guardian.
source https://thenassauguardian.com/2020/04/27/covid-19-small-business-profile-signature-styles/
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