Covid-2019 and the adult care business: six on-line interviews

Russian version

Dmitry Korobitsyn, the Director General of the “Supplier of Happiness” company

We have arranged teleworking for administrative staff. That claimed no significant effort as we tend to use a lot of on-line services and cloud computing. The warehouse service and the administrative team continued to work as usual. Part of the employees was accommodated in a hotel next to the warehouse to avoid their necessity to use public transport. For those employees who were not accommodated in the hotel for this or that reason, we agreed upon a taxi to bring them to work and back home to guarantee maximum safety for both the staff and the visitors of our office. A bit later we arranged the possibility of contactless goods handover. And this is only one part of those measures we have taken. We do our best for our staff to feel safe.

The complete interview is available on video

Andrey Narkunas, the marketing director of the “Dzhaga-Dzhaga” company

We can currently notice a significant sales volume increase. It has no direct relation with the lockdown or the pandemic. This is rather a result of a well-designed working strategy applied to the Russian business environment. We were ready for this business’ specific phenomena and we just followed the plan we had elaborated last year. Our plant switched for round – the-clock working schedule. As for the sales departments, they are working as usual, with very few changes.

The complete interview is available on video

Irina Tenyayeva, the ambassador of the “System JO” company

We obviously gave up commuting due to lockdowns. Our company used to hold presentations and active selling process. We used to be always on the way, we used to visit our clients to treat them in person. Nowadays, we are trying to work online. We are always on the phone holding on-line trainings. Unfortunately, our sales team won’t commute before July. Luckily, our manufacturing and warehouse are working as usual. No redundancies: our company managed to save jobs for everyone. And we have recently welcomed some new employees. As for manufacturing, we have drafted a new niche: we started making sanitizers as soon as the quarantine began. Despite many changes we have witnessed, we are trying to adjust to the situation and keep active at work.

The complete interview is available on video

Nadezhda Volgutova, the owner of the “Intim 13” chain store in Saransk

As we purchase our most demanded items in China, we started having supply delays in February when the Chinese border was closed. We had to quit our wholesale shipment keeping the items at our warehouse. Thanks to that, we can now afford to work following the usual schedule. Good news: we have recently got the first shipment from China. Our lives are getting better.

The complete interview is available on video

Sergey Ivanov, the head of a sex shop chain in Omsk and the ambassador of a company making sex machines

We had to close the whole range of retail stores in Moscow and Omsk in late March. We also quitted manufacturing for two weeks. The whole staff was sent home. Two weeks later, in early April, we started to go out. They introduced some rules and procedures, a sort of system of work allowance for some companies. After that, we were able to re-open our office, run the manufacturing and open five outlets as pickup points for our on-line stores. That was how we worked for about a month. In middle May, approximately, the authorities in Omsk allowed some small nonfood stores, with their room not exceeding 400 hundred square meters, to be opened. Currently we have six outlets having separate entrance from the street. They are open. Unfortunately, those located inside shopping malls in Moscow and Omsk are closed. We managed to agree upon the rental charge with our lessors, some of them gave us a 100% discount, others-a 70% one. Generally, we came to an agreement with almost everybody except on the Moscow lessors.

The complete interview is available on video

Sergey Prudnik, the head of the “L’amour” chain store

We started to panic, for two minutes or something, and then we sat down to work. The other countries’ experience showed it would obviously take more than a week to get over the epidemic. So, we drafted a plan for three months at the very beginning just in case our stores should be closed. We had a talk with the employees, reflected about how they could benefit during lockdowns: some training or the possibility of involving them in sales. We even gave them out some advertising stuff to let our workers sell the goods through their contacts in social media making an additional discount, with some commission added to their salary. We used to postpone the work on the new website but we have recently speeded up a lot. We managed to launch a project on producing on-line schools. Our first school is to be opened in a week. Naturally, our retail channel is closed. We redirected our efforts towards on-line sales increase. Thanks to that, we managed to increase sales fourfold in April and covered the whole set of costs the off-line stoppage incurs.

The complete interview is available on video