Hurricane Sandy made it rough to do business on the East Coast. But some entrepreneurs stayed calm and found some creative ways to cope.
Brooklyn's No Name Bar stayed open during Hurricane Sandy. (Never mind the leaf debris in the bar's courtyard.)
Unless you've just emerged from a heads-down 72-hour hackathon, you know that the East Coast had some historically horrible weather yesterday. Hurricane Sandy paralyzed businesses throughout some of the most densely populated places in the country as the center of the 500-mile-wide storm barreled ashore in the mid-Atlantic states. Among other headline-grabbing disruptions, Sandy flooded the New York Stock Exchange, shorted out power stations in New York and New Jersey, sunk a replica of the HMS Bounty off North Carolina, shut down the Huffington Post, and wiped out a portion of Atlantic City's famous boardwalk. On a somber human note, the storm is already being cited for some 20 fatalities--10 of them in New York City--and officials fear that number may rise.
Eqecat, a firm that forecasts the cost of natural disasters, is predicting insurance claims could surge to $10 billion in Sandy's aftermath. "If Eqecat is correct, Sandy would rank as the fifth-worst hurricane in history, based on inflation-adjusted losses, according to the Insurance Information Institute," noted Reuters.
As infrastructure and public transportation collapsed, and customers prudently stayed home, entrepreneurs found their coping ability and ingenuity tested to the limit--along with their social media creativity. Many turned to Twitter and Facebook to stay in touch with customers and staff and the outside world. In the process, social media turned into a real-time record of small business survival tactics during Hurricane Sandy.
Staying in touch, even when the doors are closed
For Ricky's, a New York City-based cosmetics and costume shop with 10 permanent locations around Manhattan (and 30 more pop-up shops), the storm couldn't have hit at a worse time. Ricky's NYC founder and chairman Todd Kenig says Halloween sales account for about 20 percent of the firm's annual $50 million revenue, but Sandy forced to shutter all of its stores, as well as its corporate office, in the two days leading up to the holiday.
Like many businesses around New York, Ricky's took to Twitter and Facebook to share information with its customers, tweeting, "Due to circumstances with #Sandy, all Ricky's locations & Corp/Customer Service have been closed for today. Stay safe, everyone!" BaubleBar, the purveyor of women's jewelry with a retail store in New York's Flatiron district, echoed that sentiment on their Facebook page: "Because of Hurricane Sandy, The Bar will be closed Monday-Weds! We hope everyone is staying safe... (and stocked up on snacks)."
Plus, a few silver linings
Some entrepreneurial businesses, remarkably, managed to make the best of the situation. The breakdown of public transportation through the Northeast was a nightmare for most businesses, but for the on-demand taxi start-up Uber, it was an opportunity. "Subways may be closed but we're up!" the company tweeted at on point on Tuesday. "We have some cars available at the moment, and see more coming online."
