ReOpen Together

I sent a box of cookies to the post office on Mother's Day to thank the staff for shipping out my orders during this time. I also donated cookies to the Wilton "Adopt-a-Senior" program. It was created to boost the morale of high school seniors that are missing out on the big milestones associated with the final year of high school.

I have asthma, so I am worried about getting ill. Luckily, though, my business is particularly well-suited for curbside pick-up. It is also well-positioned to take online orders, since I had my website redone just before the crisis.

In the beginning, we lost a lot of our business. We provided produce for schools, company cafeterias and the casinos and lost about 70-75% of that business, so we reached out to retailers who were having trouble keeping up with the demand for produce. We realized people were having some anxiety about going to the grocery stores, so we decided to offer curbside produce pick-up, now we are up to 2,000 cars a week. It has helped us put some of our furloughed employees back to work.

The number one lesson learned is “you can’t sit and do nothing.” The second is the power of social media. We started this with a few followers on Instagram and now we have 1,500 followers. It has helped us communicate with our customers and get feedback from them.

When this started Peapod and Amazon had waiting periods for delivery, and we could offer same day delivery. Our focus was on providing food for our customers safely, while looking out for the health of our employees, so we started offering curbside pick-up and delivery services, as well as offered our employees masks and gloves. Through all of this, we have been able to keep our employees.

We take it day-by-day. We were not set up for online orders, so we are adjusting by taking our orders over the phone, but we are making it work.

Upon returning from international travel in early March, I cancelled further travel and trade shows and started ordering the supplies and PPE I thought we would need to get through this. Because we make cleaning supplies and our products are used for sanitizing and disinfecting, we met the definition of an essential business.

We separated our staff into different teams that use different entrances and exits, restrooms and break rooms to allow for social distancing. We went from running shifts Monday-Friday to running 10-hour shifts Monday-Thursday to allow time for cleaning and disinfecting so we could bring in another team to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I wanted to find a meaningful way to contribute to the fight against COVID-19 and a lot of the machines needed to produce hospital gowns are ones that we use in our normal operations. We made a prototype and established a partnership with Yale New Haven Hospital and the State of Connecticut to supply them. In addition to providing much needed PPE, it allowed us to keep the company going while our sporting goods business essentially came to a halt.

We certainly see an opportunity to continue producing PPE and to bring the same quality and commitment to this business as we do to our sporting goods operation. We’ve already been able to innovate by offering washable, re-usable, isolation gowns as well as an isolation hood that has a face shield that prevents the N95 masks from getting contaminated. I’m confident that if we continue to move forward with our values and standards top of mind, the future will bring new opportunities.

We are a third generation family owned business. We know that even in uncertain times, kids still have birthdays and the Easter Bunny still comes. During this time, we have made 220 elaborate Easter baskets and people from all over the country have called to select gifts for their relatives living locally.

Caroline came up with a no-contact pickup idea called “Toy Store Takeout.” Our customers can also call or FaceTime us to shop virtually. The bright spot in all of this has been getting to know our customers better. Included with each gift we sell is a handwritten, personal note from the staff member who fulfilled the order. We want our customers to know that we are thinking of them.

Before this crisis, about 40 percent of our total business came from public schools. On March 15, when they all closed, we had 8,000 cases of milk without a home. Suddenly, stores started calling us, asking if we could deliver milk. Orders started rolling in as soon as we began advertising home milk delivery.

Even though schools are closed, we are able to donate milk to emergency feeding programs. These programs distribute lunch to children who would have received free meals during the school day. We also donate three percent of our profits from home deliveries to St Vincent’s Hospital Milk Fund, which delivers milk to the homeless.

People began buying it as fast as we were making it. We have been able to provide hand sanitizer to corporations, hospitals, municipalities, local police departments and individuals. We had to extend our hours and adapt to being open every day. The hardest part of the transition was finding bottles for the hand sanitizer.

I had to learn to take a deep breath, go with the flow, smile and figure it out. Think about what you and your business can do to help the greater good.

Habco started looking at what was happening in other parts of the world and realized in February that we had to prepare for the worst. By mid-March we had acquired our PPE, implemented staff temperature checks and enabled all staff that could do so to work from home. We also moved to a two-shift system with no overlaps between shifts, staggered breaks, and developed ways to decrease the number of people working at any given time.

Communication has been key, and even though we have been working split shifts and half the company has been working from home, we have put a priority on maintaining a sense of community within the company. We started a YouTube channel and I post daily videos, highlighting important news and information about what is happening in Connecticut, the country and our company. We have a strong corporate culture and it was important to continue that during this time.