Kiki Lally has never seen a mess she was afraid of.
The Calgary entrepreneur founded the Pinnovate craft studio in the middle of an Alberta recession and has seen a fair share of sticky fingers in the hundreds of art classes, birthday parties, and camps her company has hosted.
When the COVID-19 measures sparked shutdowns last year, Lally approached the crisis the way she knew best: with color, yarn and a little creativity.
She launched DIY Delivery, an online website that sells craft kits, but quickly discovered that it wasn’t cheap or as easy as a few clicks to set up.
“It’s not as easy as it looks … All of a sudden we’re learning about e-commerce and inventory and creating kits, videos, and a YouTube channel,” Lally said.
“Even the logistics of delivery sounds so simple, until you actually find all these nooks and crannies in your city and work out plans.”
Lally’s experience provides a glimpse into some of the challenges Canada’s 1.14 million small businesses faced while vying for e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canadian Association of Independent Businesses said that a third of small businesses across the country were selling online as of November. Approximately 152,000 small businesses switched between March and November to kickstart e-commerce, and one in five independent businesses told advocacy that they would increasingly rely on this route to survive.
While customers have blown through online shopping, delivery, take-out, and roadside pickup, small business owners have worked around the clock, spent a lot of money, and retooled their entire operations to keep it all together.
Some have had to redesign products and menu items to ensure that they do not arrive damaged or cold and damp upon delivery. Others have toyed with virtual reality to offer digital fittings for apparel, and many have looked into coding, social media, and online payment systems.
Catherine Choi, the owner of Hanji Gifts in Toronto, was involved in photography.
When COVID-19 hit Canada, her company already had a website selling goods, but she estimates that only 15 percent of its products were on it.
Choi bought a light box and between setting up her daughter for the virtual school and processing roadside pick-up orders, she began searching the store’s inventory.
“It will take a long time,” she said. “We probably have less than half of our products online right now.”
Choi has tried to focus on adding items from artisans and manufacturers who provide their photos for them as this limits the work.
She has also focused on items that are easy to ship, such as cards, stickers, washi tapes, socks, and craft paper. Bulky and fragile products like ceramics will come later.
Putting items online was a time-consuming task as Hanji doesn’t have a traditional payment system and uses old school paper books and folders to keep track of inventory across its three locations.
Choi moved Hanji’s warehouse closer to home so she could work on orders processing late into the evening, but that didn’t solve every problem.
“Someone might want a card and there is only one left that is only online at our warehouse in Scarborough. So we need to figure out how to get that card to the place where it should be picked up,” Choi said .
Dealing with so many changes and stressors at once has “overwhelmed” entrepreneurs, said Darryl Julott, executive director of Digital Main Street, which helps companies digitize operations and is supported by the City of Toronto and the Toronto Association of Business Improvement Areas.
“I’m talking to business owners and they will say we’re trying to make a website. Every time we talk to a company, they overwhelm us and we don’t get answers to our questions so we don’t know what to do, “he said.
Founded in 2014, Digital Main Street seeks to dispel some of these assumptions and make them easier and less confusing for businesses that are realizing that bricks and clicks are needed to make a living.
Over the past few months, the organization has helped many entrepreneurs build accounting software, email systems, and online stores. The biggest barriers they notice are the bookkeeping or the residence of the owners in relation to their business, Julott said.
Many companies still use paper books and they have to go to their office or store for sales or adjustments, which can make it difficult and time-consuming to operate online, he explained.
While a company’s logistics and retooling can be an issue, Lally said the hardest part of moving online is keeping hope up while the pandemic drags on.
“Like everyone else in Canada, we didn’t know what this (pandemic) was and what it was going to be and what the long-term effects this was,” she said.
Most of their staff were ready to roll up their sleeves and do whatever they could to start the delivery. One worker waived her salary and instead volunteered in the studio.
Regulars even offered to drop off the studio’s kits, but most customers don’t even know how much work goes into a transformation, Lally said.
“It always looks easy when someone else does it, but it really isn’t.”
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Tara Deschamps, the Canadian press
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