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‘It’s time to work together’: Comradeship among SMEs
Many small and medium companies, especially those involved in the retail sector have lost their customers as people avoid going to markets or malls in compliance with the government’s social distancing policy.
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Fatimah, the 62-year-old owner of a small kiosk in Kayu Putih subdistrict in East Jakarta, waits for customers inside her kiosk on March 4. (JP/Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman)
S
mall and medium enterprises (SMEs) are helping each other as many of them have begun to feel the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on their business activities.
Many small and medium companies, especially those involved in the retail sector have lost their customers as people avoid going to markets or malls in compliance with the government’s social distancing policy.
Kania Annisa Anggiani, the founder of Chic & Darling, an all-women-run SME that creates and sells lifestyle products, reached out to her fellow business owners through her Instagram account, @kekekania, and offered to promote their products for free to her 36,300 followers.
“Right now is not the time to compete. We’re all in survival mode,” she wrote on her post on Saturday, while asking for owners to list their businesses in the comment section and saying that she would make a directory that could be passed on to the public.
As of Monday, the post was flooded with more than 400 comments from small and medium business owners across all sectors who confided how the pandemic had drastically impacted their businesses.
Kania told The Jakarta Post on Monday over the phone that she felt compelled to support other businesses as she had seen her own enterprise struggle.
Her business saw a 30 to 40 percent drop in sales and she mentioned how other businesses she knew had seen similar falls in sales figures, with some resorting to permanently closing down their shops while others closed temporarily until further notice.
