Covid Stories

We’ve been incredibly impressed with the way so many Co-ops and Community businesses have managed through the Covid-19 situation and lockdown. The commitment to serving their communities and the resilience and ingenuity they have shown has been amazing!

We’ve spoken to a number of our clients about how they have managed – here we share the story of Oxford Wood Recycling, after speaking to Richard Snow.

What was your immediate challenge and what did you do?

The immediate challenge was to think about communications – how would we keep in touch with the team, and support everyone? We knew that we had to lockdown, shut up shop and cease trading. So, at the beginning that was clear – though later on it became less clear!

We knew that there was a furlough scheme and so we put everybody eligible on furlough – 21 out of 24 employees. The only people who weren’t were myself, because somebody had to keep working, a recently appointed marketer and our recently appointed collections manger. With construction closed, there were no collections to do, but we flexed the collection manager’s time to support me in a managerial capacity, as we developed ways to keep in touch with our team.

Because we had our marketer, we were able to set up a communications plan to keep the team engaged. We immediately set up a WhatsApp group and worked out a ‘keeping in touch’ regime, everyone who was furloughed got a call from their line manager every week.

Then we had to very quickly think about any customers who needed to be informed or kept in touch with, and a couple of suppliers as well, where we place quite a lot of business – we were really proud of the way we kept in touch and communicated with them all.

Then it was all about the finances.

We had to consider the implications the pandemic was having financially in the short term, and at that time, of course, we could not comprehend at all what the medium-term looked like. We didn’t know how long it would go on for so we just ‘got on’ with the day-to-day as best we could.

From May 11^th construction industry started to come back in dribs and drabs, so we were able to start collecting wood waste again. Then from June, we opened up the shop. We could have opened earlier, as DIY and Builders Merchants were deemed essential services, but we didn’t feel comfortable doing that – it didn’t feel right on many levels so we didn’t, but we were running the collections.

What support did you access?

Co-op and Community Finance allowed us to freeze our loan payments so that was really good. Our landlord also gave us a three-month rental holiday, with no payback needed. We accessed £25k from the local authority plus a £50k business interruption grant, we used the furlough scheme, and we successfully applied for an emergency Awards For All grant too.

We had a really robust business plan from 2019 and had been – cautiously – forecasting growth. But unfortunately, we’ve had to review forecasts and it showed that we needed to lose the equivalent of three full-time staff members – this did mean that regrettably, we had to move to redundancies. We were able to work with an HR consultant on a process that was fair and open, and then in full consultation with staff, we did that, through a combination of reducing hours for a few people, a voluntary redundancy, leaving just one compulsory redundancy.

What are you doing now?

We are running collections and trading as close as we can to normal – we are trading slightly down on normal, but not that far away – producing amazing quality furniture from reclaimed wood. We’ve got some fantastic carpenters and the stuff they make really is stunning. We’ve also done some new development of the space and got some new machinery, so the workshop will be fully up and running in the new year – we can’t wait to get back to it!

We’ve been incredibly impressed with the way so many Co-ops and Community businesses have managed through the Covid-19 situation and lockdown. The commitment to serving their communities and the resilience and ingenuity they have shown has been amazing!

We’ve spoken to a number of our clients about how they have managed – here we share the story of October Books, after speaking to Clare Diaper.

What was your immediate challenge?

The immediate challenge was two-fold. How to keep selling books and our range of food products safely and also out how to manage our events, which were normally held in our community space. This included our scheduled AGM and our author talks, which keep our community engaged.

What did you do?

We changed things up really quickly and started doing delivery, promoting online ordering, and we moved all our events online. We had a really successful and fun AGM, with many people using online tools for the first time. We also added new events, including a regular virtual get-together in the form of Bring Your Own book and our online author events have attracted a global audience from as far afield as America.

As a team, we got together virtually and decided who was going to be furloughed, as we could not afford to keep the shop fully open. We wanted to make sure that those who were continuing to work were happy while others were furloughed, and that everyone was working effectively and safely. We recognised that our food offer would be important, so we made sure we had good stocks and had to quickly set ourselves up to deliver. Our newest team member Jamie became a regular sight whizzing round the local area on his bike!

Through the second lockdown, everyone went onto on partial furlough, – we could keep the shop open, unlike other book-only bookshops who had to close, as we also sold food. This worked well and meant everyone stayed involved in the changes and progress, which worked better for the team.

What support did you access?

Ian [Rothwell, CCF Investment Manager] was so on the ball, offering a capital holiday during the lockdown. It was all very quick and organised easily – it was great to have that without having to do any chasing ourselves.

We had great support from Nathan Brown of Co-op Culture around the government grant and furlough schemes. We were on the Power to Change Community Business Trade up Programme, which had started just as lockdown happened and that proved to be a really fantastic support network during this year of continual changes. We also got involved with the Solent LEP Pay It Forward Crowdfunder, and we smashed our target of £2,000 raised, and so received matched funding from the LEP, which was fantastic.

What are you doing now?

We are continuing with online ordering and have greatly improved that – instead of customers just emailing in, all our non-book stock is now available on our own online store. We’ve also signed up to Bookshop.org and are curating lists of recommended reads so that even after lockdown, people can browse our shelves, especially as we approach Christmas.

Happily, we are still trading ok and have more people on board – we’ve two new committee members and a new staff member, too, who have all joined in the last few months.

What are your plans moving forward?

It feels like a really good time to reassess forward direction. The general situation won’t be clear until spring, but we have done, and are still doing a lot of contemplating and reassessing how to take us forward. Connecting in with other groups and organisations is a key part of this and we are doing this through a series of online local community events. We are also part of the City of Culture bid and we are growing our connections with the Universities and other related literary and creative organisations such as the CHAOS network and Gods House Tower.

Since August, we have been a Wellbeing at Work employer, looking after the team health and wellbeing and making sure we can cope with the continual changes that have been, and are still being, thrown at us. We are also reassessing some of our income streams – our regular university stall has disappeared, so we need to look at replacing that for February for the second semester

We’re also looking at how to reengage the community as we still can’t properly get together physically. For our December members meeting, we headed out into our community on a milk float and delivered mince pies to our members!

We’ve been incredibly impressed with the way so many Co-ops and Community businesses have managed through the Covid-19 situation and lockdown. The commitment to serving their communities and the resilience and ingenuity they have shown has been amazing!

We’ve spoken to a number of our clients about how they have managed  – here we share the story of Slaley Community Shop, after speaking to Norman Watson

What was your immediate challenge?

We were really worried about how we would continue trading. The shops runs entirely on volunteers – could they still come? Normally we were open until 5pm, but we reduced the hours to close at 12 and we’ve had people volunteer we’d never heard of before! Some existing volunteers who felt they should not interact with the customers have continued to provide vital services with administration and keeping the shop as covid-secure as possible.

What did you do, and what are you doing now?

We kept trading. The shop has a really busy paper delivery service and most of what we sell is milk and bread, the basics. Our sales actually went up by 14% – and stayed up after the end of the first lockdown. People didn’t want to go into Hexham [the nearest town] they wanted to shop locally, and we were able to help them. We sure we had a range of quality products from local producers – meat, eggs, honey and the like – thereby supporting them during the pandemic, too. These have proved very popular. We already had a prescription delivery service which continues to be very well-used. It reduces visits to the surgery, thus helping our local health professionals.

In the shop itself, we introduced extra cleaning and the cleaning regime is meticulous. An hour is set aside before opening for cleaning and setting up the shop. Another hour is dedicated to cleaning, cashing up and closing. Customers are required to wear a mask and socially distance by waiting outside until the previous customer vacates the shop. Sanitiser is available and a perspex screen separates the volunteers and customers, who are encouraged to pay by credit/debit card. All frequently touched surfaces are wiped down regularly during opening hours. Stock checking and restocking take place out of hours and the volunteers don’t mix unless from the same household.

We’ve been able to run some great Zoom wine-tastings and have a Christmas wine box offer which has helped to promote the excellent range of wine in the shop. This is chosen and managed by the premier wine professional in the North-East, who just happens to be the Vicar of Slaley!

The Parish Council, the shop and the church co-operated to set up the Pyramid of Care. Every resident in the civil parish received a card, assuring them of any support with shopping etc and a telephone contact for their area representative who they could chat to. The shop made it easy for them to pay for goods on-line and provided delivery where necessary. All this was made possible because of the number of volunteers who responded.

The Parish Council was also willing to provide emergency financial support if any resident really needed it.

What support did you access?

We accessed two grants, one from Northumberland County Council of £10,000 and one from The Prince’s Countryside Fund to see if we could develop online shopping. This is in progress – the website is set up but managing inventory is taking a while. We have a new cabin to do this – we need a separate office space. There used to be an office above the shop but we let this out as a flat, generating income from the shop and providing an extra local home.

We were glad not to need any more finance or to take a break from repaying our loan – far from it!

What are your plans moving forward?

We have to do some more work internally in the shop – replacing some shelving – but nothing grand. After running successfully since we bought the shop, we’re in the process of working out a five year plan and we have two new board members.

It’s been a tough year. Ever since things turned upside down in March, times have been hard for everyone. 

Co-ops and community business have had to deal with the challenges of closed doors, cashflow, and distancing, like any other business. Unlike many mainstream businesses, however, these organisations often have the love and support of their communities woven through them – they are of, and for the people they serve. In hard times this love turns to loyalty, and it’s been phenomenal to watch more people get involved, and more people get support. This is the world we want to live in.

We’ve been incredibly impressed by the way the organisations we work with, and have lent to, have coped, pivoted and kept going. This is not to say that there haven’t been hard choices and big decisions – but a co-operative approach has helped make the difference.

To brighten this midwinter, we’re sharing stories of our clients who have come through this difficult time with something – still – to smile about. We’ll be sharing these stories between now and mid January. Look out for the first one later this week.

If you are a community business or Co-op that needs finance to rebuild and grow, please do not hesitate to get in touch.