Huge amount of businesses going under due to covid

[Bryce W]

Without looking around, I'd wager that those that support businesses are doing better.
After I look around at my colleagues, and after looking at our own explosive activity...(we only support businesses)...I'd say MSPs and IT that caters to SMB are doing very well. I don't see how residential would fair better. Setting our employees up to work from home, their employer is paying for all of that.

Reading more, it's looking like it really depends on WHO your clients are. If many of your MSP clients are in hard-hit industries, tourism, hotels, events etc.. you'll end up hurting.
What industries are you serving?

 

[pcpete]

It may be about diversification of clients, residential or business aside.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Reading more, it's looking like it really depends on WHO your clients are. If many of your MSP clients are in hard-hit industries, tourism, hotels, events etc.. you'll end up hurting.
What industries are you serving?

Going across our top $ clients, we have a good mixture of healthcare, non-profit clients including a large womens shelter that I have, and a few foundations, insurance, accounting, small restaurant/bars, some package stores (they've been doing well), schools, manufacturing, law firms.

One of our guys has(d) a hair salon client, they closed in the beginning...but they were small and not an MSP client. We've done hotels but they were not managed clients, just one time network/wireless installs. We've had marinas and campgrounds benefit from this COVID, many people went to staying on their boats over the summer (we did ourselves a lot more)....since they didn't travel (although my wife and I still travel...we just came back from FL..tested all safe/negative for Covid). But marinas and campgrounds saw a big swell in their....nearly full time living there people....so they had us beef up their wireless quite a bit to handle the big increase in load.

 

[Galdorf]

I called some of the businesses that i use to service number had been disconnected so looks like most have gone out of business one of them got in contact with me for personal computer service.

I asked him what happened he said when covid hit business almost stopped he was in the printing business bank cheques and personal for banks as well as calendars and pamphlets and restaurant menus.

He was in business for 45 years most of my residential clients died from old age slowly have been getting younger customers in but not fast enough to replace ones that have died.

Service calls are really dead never seen anything like this but it looks bad we are headed to total lock downs in next few months Canada wide here we are getting 20+ people week in a city with 170k people.

 

[cypress]

Busy was off to a really good start the first couple months but nose dived once the pandemic started. What has kept me afloat has been my managed clients and even then that has been quiet. Break/fix has been very slow, clients are understandably holding onto funds and only getting things fixed if absolutely needed. Definitely been a deflating feeling.

Hasn't given me the motivation to constantly work on this being my side business. Hence why I haven't been posting or logging in as much.

 

[callthatgirl]

I'm still in my own boat of disasters here, I'm up between 10-15% from 2019. I went through a few really slow weeks, I didn't even care if I had work or not. Now I'm doing a complete shift that no one will believe I'm doing during a pandemic. Moving out of break/fix and not to MSP. lol!

 

[Jmpinney]

We've lost maybe 30% of our clients, looking forward to things picking up again, but it's given us an opportunity to tackle technical debt.

 

[bertie40]

Hi Guys.
Yep....... Still here, and it's been a while

Just hit 17 years in the biz.
BreakFix died for me a couple of years ago, so I'm primarily an MSP now.

Any repairwork comes from my MSP customers.

I'm lucky that I look after a handful of charities as well as domestics, and with the recent unpleasantness, I've had an increase in charity workers requiring support.

Generally, I'm better off.

Bizwise, I'm expecting a downturn when life gets better, and people return to their offices,..... and retire their aging laptops back to the closet.

(I did write "when people stop dying", but that's insensitive).

Got some £$ from the UK gov, but that's going into an account to help pay a big tax bill that's been over my head for a while.

Best wishes to those who ain't so fortunate.

 

[Bryce W]

We've lost maybe 30% of our clients, looking forward to things picking up again, but it's given us an opportunity to tackle technical debt.

Is there any similarity between those clients? In the same industry for example?

 

[Galdorf]

According to CIFB over 200k small registered businesses have gone out if business that is not counting large and very large and unregistered seems government does not care about them according to stats as many as 400k have gone out of business to this date.

 

[Sky-Knight]

I would say it's not that government doesn't care, it's that it can't care. We're seeing new variants spread and reinfecting people that already had it. So... herd immunity won't work at least not without 3-4 waves of this thing over the entire planet.

Now, assuming the virus is only 2% lethal, for each wave... that's 3-4 x 2.0% x the world population worth of dead people. The virus weights its deaths on older people, which tend to be your community pillars and business leaders.

So in a very real way the governments of the world can either shutdown everything and watch it all fall apart, but perhaps preserve the lives of those that can restart the economy after it's all over. OR, roll the dice and watch the same people drop anyway. After all, no SMB survives its owner dying.

Rock... meet hard place. There is no policy to win this. Even if you told everyone to just get back to work and isolated everyone north of 50 to be "safe", you'd have the same impact on the SMB. Of course you'd also cause the Baby Boomers to abandon power and money in-masse... which they aren't about to allow anytime soon. Which only brings the generation wars into it, and further explains the schizophrenic response of government.

I live in AZ, I can tell you that no control doesn't work. Our economy is crap here too, we have the global high score, and we're losing doctors and nurses every day because they can't handle the stress anymore. And God help you if you need non-COVID related medical care of any sort...

 

[Galdorf]

I would say it's not that government doesn't care, it's that it can't care. We're seeing new variants spread and reinfecting people that already had it. So... herd immunity won't work at least not without 3-4 waves of this thing over the entire planet.

Now, assuming the virus is only 2% lethal, for each wave... that's 3-4 x 2.0% x the world population worth of dead people. The virus weights its deaths on older people, which tend to be your community pillars and business leaders.

So in a very real way the governments of the world can either shutdown everything and watch it all fall apart, but perhaps preserve the lives of those that can restart the economy after it's all over. OR, roll the dice and watch the same people drop anyway. After all, no SMB survives its owner dying.

Rock... meet hard place. There is no policy to win this. Even if you told everyone to just get back to work and isolated everyone north of 50 to be "safe", you'd have the same impact on the SMB. Of course you'd also cause the Baby Boomers to abandon power and money in-masse... which they aren't about to allow anytime soon. Which only brings the generation wars into it, and further explains the schizophrenic response of government.

I live in AZ, I can tell you that no control doesn't work. Our economy is crap here too, we have the global high score, and we're losing doctors and nurses every day because they can't handle the stress anymore. And God help you if you need non-COVID related medical care of any sort...

They keep upping the requirements for government assistance and they keep locking down every winter say this goes on for 5 years more and more businesses will no longer be able to qualify for assistance to qualify you need to make so much per year.

But if they keep locking down only people profiting here are Walmart and Costco thus income keeps dropping for other businesses.

 

[Sky-Knight]

They keep upping the requirements for government assistance and they keep locking down every winter say this goes on for 5 years more and more businesses will no longer be able to qualify for assistance to qualify you need to make so much per year.

But if they keep locking down only people profiting here are Walmart and Costco thus income keeps dropping for other businesses.

Oh I know... it's a catastrophic mess. People's savings are running out... desperation is going to set in soon.

And when you go back to work? You get to take an unpaid vacation for two weeks every six months because you got sick. And every time you get sick? Your odds of death increase.

Welcome to SARS.

P.S. It's not just you, but everyone in the office at the same time...

 

[lan101]

Make sure and take your Vitamin D3 and Zinc supplements. Also seen a study that showed people that take melatonin supplements have like a 28 or so percent less chance of severe symptoms etc. Something to do with regulating your immune system so it doesn't go all crazy.

 

[Galdorf]

the university here just declared bankruptcy wow it is pretty large.
The residence alone supports over 1600 students.

Administrative staff	922
Undergraduates	9000
Postgraduates	515

 

[Canadian Tech]

the university here just declared bankruptcy wow it is pretty large.
The residence alone supports over 1600 students.

Administrative staff	922
Undergraduates	9000
Postgraduates	515

What University is this? I haven't heard about this yet.

 

[britechguy]

@Canadian Tech,

Laurentian, I presume. See: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/can...ian-university-files-for-creditor-protection/

See also, from this article (and others, in slightly different words): "President Robert Haché announced the move to seek court protection on Monday, saying it was necessary to put the university in Sudbury on a firm financial footing after years of deficits. He said the move will not affect day-to-day operations or the student experience."

It's far from the only university that's had "years of deficits" that the Covid-19 situation has brought to a head. But that's all the Covid-19 situation has done. The financial problems were many years in the making.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Yep, and if you want to play in the economy just remember this...

While it sucks right now, your competition is also taking it in the shorts. Anyone that survives, gets the market share!

Now is the time to SELL SELL SELL! Which I really suck at... ugh.

 

[Galdorf]

Unemployment has skyrocketed here everyone i know has been laid off brother and sisters nieces and nephews and friends and their kids my business is even less than last year i am also seeing a large number of for rent signs where small businesses use to be and this will keep going on for years.

 

[Galdorf]

The source and bestbuy are closing in my area all that is left is Costco and Walmart huge number of businesses are gone closed for good i even signed up for work with other tech companies so far only 2 jobs in 3 months i use to get calls every day for service now 1 or 2 calls a month.