Innovation in Trying Times | Newsletter #4
It's the 4th week of our newsletter and times continues to move at hyperspeed, but at the same time, at snail pace. The world is experiencing its share of challenges, but that doesn't mean all is lost. It's these tough times that the most amazing things can happen in business. You just have to look at your challenges as new opportunities and find solutions for them. Doing so will help you and your team further evolve your business during a pandemic and it will set you up for success once the sun comes out again.
In this week's email, we cover the following topics:
Is Your Business Evolving?
Have You Looked Inward Yet?
The "New" Normal With Fashion & PPE
Supporting Your Brand's Community
Our Support During The Pandemic
The Suuchi PPE Catalog For COVID-19
Episodes To Check Out While You WFH
We hope that you find today's email informative and that it adds value to you during these trying times.
All of our lives have been disrupted, but it's times like these that opportunity lies right around the corner. You're likely a company that's already in business or you're someone that is in the process of launching your startup, either way, you're dealing with this pandemic.
Every opportunity will be different for each business, but these are the times that true innovation can occur if we take the challenge head-on. What can you be doing right now to innovate? Innovation changes the way that we live our lives, shop, consume content, and more. This week's focus is to really lead you into the weekend with the mentality that anything is possible and COVID-19 is leveling the playing field for everyone. It doesn't matter the size of your business, how you've been impacted, but how are you going to evolve during this time to add more value to your customers and partners?
You may be sitting on an email list of thousands of individuals and you know they're consumers. Maybe they're not buying exactly what you typically would sell, but maybe you have an interesting story or set of skills that your customers would love to learn. Maybe you're well connected and you're able to help your customers by making introductions for one another to support each other during COVID-19's rampage and beyond.
It's times like this that you bring back any idea that you thought was too out-of-the-box and you begin to experiment. What is your target customer resonating with? What are they doing right now? What will they be doing once this goes back to normal? How were they impacted and how can you provide support during this time? Can you reach new customers right now? Who are they? What problems can you solve for them?
We could go on and on, but take it upon yourself to really examine your business, yourself, and think about what you can be doing right now to add value. How can your business evolve during this time to thrive when life goes to the "new" normal?
WATCH NOW: How to Make Your own Face Covering (U.S. Surgeon General) 😷
Last week, the CDC recommended for Americans to use cloth face coverings to protect themselves, especially in areas of significant community-based transmission. While right now we're seeing people wear pretty much anything to protect themselves from contracting the virus, we're also seeing a new fashion trend that's likely to survive well past this pandemic.
Once life goes back to the "new" normal, brands and retailers, and any business with a physical location will need to implement some form of PPE to protect both their staff and customers. This presents an opportunity for businesses, primarily in the fashion sector, to create branded, non-medical, PPE fashion statements that will literally become walking billboards for your business. Consumers aren't going to go out without masks, gloves, and whatever else they deem worthy of protecting them, which means that they could be wearing your PPE.
Just something to think about as you're trying to find ways to pivot or further add value to your customer base when they're not shopping for their typical, non-essential, fashion products.
Interested in PPE? Let's talk!
WATCH NOW: YouTube | Coronavirus at Gymshark 🦈
Supporting one another during a pandemic is critical for success during challenging times, and Gymshark knows it. The fitness-centric online retailer is doing some amazing work to further support their customers and provide personal trainers with revenue streams since most in-person training is not an option right now.
Customers are trapped indoors, but they need to exercise in order to keep their sanity. Personal trainers need work since they can't engage with customers in person. In order to provide value to both of these and solve their problems, Gymshark is hosting FREE online workouts for their customers and community, while paying these personal trainers to host said workouts. The trainers feature Gymshark's products and the customers purchase their clothes to exercise in.
We found this idea quite innovative and very tailored to solving a problem for both the customer and the service provider. Take inspiration from what this brand is doing and think about how you can support whomever your target customers are.
We officially joined the COVID-19 war roughly 4 weeks ago and we're just getting started. Our team has worked tirelessly to ensure that we're fully capable of sourcing & producing PPE. We took our platform, the Suuchi GRID, strengthened the capability of dynamic stages for PPE, and opened up the network to execute on this. We're proud to be working with some amazing organizations that are truly saving lives. We're also producing PPE at our headquarters, in New Jersey, in order to donate it to our local community and healthcare organizations.
If you want to join the fight or share our PPE capabilities to a party in need, please do not hesitate to pass this along. We're ready to help and support one another! Click here to connect with our team. See our catalog below!
While we are working to make as many donations as possible to our local #healthheroes, we know that many organizations across the country are in need of a mass amount of supplies, as well. That is why our network has expanded to include the sourcing & production of millions of units of PPE every single week. Our catalog is a guide to the different items that are available to help do our part in protecting healthcare workers and reducing the impacts of COVID-19. If you or someone you know is part of an organization that could use our help, we'd love to get in touch!
Download our PPE Catalog
The Suuchi Podcast is our ongoing weekly series where we interview entrepreneurs, thought leaders, and decision-makers to learn their stories of how they got to where they are today. Just by listening to someone's story and hearing how they faced a certain challenge and eventually overcame it could save you time and money!
LISTEN: Find all of our episodes on your favorite podcast app or Podbean!
In this episode of the Suuchi Podcast, Emanuel interviews Sterling Hawkins, the Co-Founder, and Co-CEO of CART, the Center for Advancing Retail and Technology. Sterling is also a keynote speaker that travels the world speaking about innovation and how businesses can implement technology to increase efficiency and take their businesses to the next level.
Being a 5th-generation retailer, Sterling started his work experience at the early age of 15, launched his first tech company right out of college, and managed to sell the startup and made his way to Silicon Valley.
Throughout Sterling's journey, he went from being worth millions to losing it all and coming to a major low-point in his life where he didn't know what his next move was going to be. This is when he remembered a saying that his mom told him when he was young:
Tune in to learn how Sterling turned his life around and built a successful career as a keynote speaker and entrepreneur that's adding massive value to businesses in retail. Find your limitless potential and take your business to the next level! Enjoy the episode 🎧
Learning About Our Technology
In this episode, Irina and Emanuel sit down with our VP of Product, Andrew McKenna, who heads up the product side of our tech platform, the Suuchi GRID. Andrew comes with a wealth of experience in the fintech space, where he took previously antiquated processes, digitized them, and helped his teams generate new sources of revenue and data. This talk is meant to share with you areas that you can implement tech for your brand that will help you succeed in the years to come! Especially in this digital era that we live in.
coronavirus, covid19, newsletter, ppe, supply chain, supply chain tech, the grid, the suuchi grid