By Ed Avis
On Tuesday, March 24, APDSP sponsored an online panel discussion about the coronavirus crisis. The event was moderated by Ed Avis, managing director of APDSP. Panelists were Kevin Howes, executive director of RSA; Rick Bosworth, president of RMX Network; John Lipari, president of Plan & Print in Syracuse, NY; and Kyle Batsford, vice president of Palomar Reprographics in Carlsbad, California.
Click here if you’d like to watch a recording of the webinar. An entire transcript of the webinar appears at the end of this article.
Below are a dozen key take-aways from the panel discussion:
1. Coronavirus can live up to 24 hours on cardboard, so disinfect boxes that arrive in your shop.
2. Reprographics can be conceivably considered an “essential business,” and thus can remain open, in any community that considers construction to be an essential business, such as New York, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, California, North Carolina and Indiana. However, the guidance is a little weaker when it comes to printers – some states have deemed printers essential, but not all.
3. Construction is continuing in many communities. Boston, San Francisco and the state of Pennsylvania have shut down construction, but other states and cities have continued to build.
4. The Emergency Family and Medical Leave Act requires you to provide up to 12 weeks of FMLA leave to anyone who has worked for you for 30 days. They can use that to care for a child out of school or if they are sick themselves. The first 10 days are unpaid, though employees can use their vacation time for that. Employers will receive tax credits to cover the cost of this.
5. The Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act requires you to provide 80 hours of sick leave on top of whatever you’re already offering. There are two categories – people caring for sick people or kids; and people who are sick themselves. Those in the first category get two thirds of their pay and those in the second category get full pay. Tax credits will help cover those costs.
6. Small Business Administration Emergency Loans are available across the country. The interest is 3.75 percent. Click here for details. Many states and cities also have loan/grant programs. Click here to read an article in Forbes that lists state-by-state programs.
7. Congress is close to passing a giant relief package that includes small business provisions, including forgivable loans for companies that continue paying their employees. Click here for details.
8. Some repro shops across the country have not made any staffing changes; others have reduced hours and made layoffs.
9. Among interesting projects that repro shops have handled during the crisis are floor graphics that are designed to mark every six feet. Grocery stores are using these in their check-out lines to maintain social distancing. Many shops are creating signage for restaurants, hospitals, and other businesses that suddenly need some kind of signage related to the crisis.
10. The supply chain for reprographics products and equipment seems to be unaffected by the crisis for now.
11. At least one shop, Palomar Reprographics in Southern California, is offering “contactless” pickup of prints. When a customer says they are coming, they put the finished job out front for them to pick up, or they put it into their open trunk or truck bed.
12. Data from ReproConnect shows that sales on Monday were down 40 percent from the normal level. That’s based on data from 270 reprographics firms.
Here is an exact transcript of the panel discussion:
Ed Avis:
Good morning everybody. This is Ed Avis, I'm the managing director of APDSP. I want to welcome you all here today and thank you for joining us. This is a stressful time for our industry and for society and we're hoping that today with this panel discussion, we can answer some questions that people are having. And share some ideas and hopefully inspire each other to keep moving forward here.
Ed Avis:
This webinar is being recorded, so if you want to listen to it again later, you can or you can share it with others. Before we start, let me tell you that if you have any questions, please submit them as soon as they come to your mind. There's a questions tab on your screen and if you don't see it, you can click on that little orange arrow and it should reveal itself.
Ed Avis:
Go ahead and send questions as they come to you and we will try to answer them as we can. If we don't have answers, we'll look them up later and then share them. Similarly, because I want some inspiring information to be shared here, if you're doing something innovative during this tough time or if you have found some new work or some new customers because of these challenges, please share that with us too. You can use the questions tab or the chat tab, either one. Just send that to me and then I will share it with the audience as we get those.
Ed Avis:
Okay, we received a number of questions that came in from the survey that we did in the registrations. So the first part of this panel discussion will be focused on answering those questions as well as we can. After I speak and give that presentation, we'll hear from Kevin Howes, who's the executive director of RSA and Rick Bosworth, the president of RMX Network about what their organizations are doing and what they are hearing from their members. Then we'll hear from two shop owners who are on the front lines of this, John Lipari, of Plan & Print in Syracuse and Kyle Batsford of Palomar Reprographics in Carlsbad, California.
Ed Avis:
Okay, I'm going to start this PowerPoint now. One of the first questions we got was how long does the virus live on paper? That's an obvious question. Did a little research on that and Harvard, a study at Harvard showed that the virus can live up to 24 hours on cardboard. That was the closest I could get to paper and I think because cardboard is made out of paper. It's safe to say that that's the case. So what does that mean? That means if you are getting shipments or if you're handling paper that's been exposed, that's been outside, or it's been shared among multiple people, make sure that you are washing your hands immediately after handling it.
Ed Avis:
And not touching your face or if it's possible, if it's cardboard boxes, try to wipe them down with disinfectant towelettes. And because the virus can live a long time on surfaces, obviously, if you have people still coming into your shop, touching your counter, touching equipment, you're going to have to disinfect that quickly to prevent the spread. Then we got a number of questions on economics issues. And the first one was is Reprographics considered an essential service? And I think that it's been made clear that in many states, at least in New York, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and California, construction work has been deemed an essential.
Ed Avis:
That's not the case in every state, but in those states at least and probably others, it has been deemed essential. And since reprographics supports construction, I think it's safe to say that if you are in those states and you are able to and you feel it's safe that you can stay open. If you primarily do printing not construction, the guidance is less clear there. I've learned that Wisconsin and Pennsylvania have deemed printers essential, probably other states have to, but I'm not aware of them or those are the two that I've learned about on that.
Ed Avis:
But I think that sense most of us serve the construction industry, at least in some part, we can be deemed essential. However, the bottom line is obviously, use your common sense. If you can safely operate and you feel that your employees are not needlessly exposed, then you can probably do it as far as the law is concerned. But if you are wondering or if you're fearful, no one's going to be surprised if you close. So use your best judgment in that regard.
Ed Avis:
Is construction itself continuing? Obviously, that affects our business. Most construction is continuing at the moment. Some cities have shut down, Boston, San Francisco and Pennsylvania have shut down construction. But other cities have continued to build. Okay then we got some questions on the various acts that have been passed. The Emergency Family and Medical Leave Act, that did pass. That requires you to provide up to 12 weeks of Family Medical Leave Act to anyone who has worked for you for 30 days. They can use that to care for a kid who's out of school or if they're sick themselves.
Ed Avis:
The first 10 days of that are unpaid, but then you have to pay them two thirds of their pay for the rest of that time. However, the employers who are subject to this will get according to the plan, they will get tax credits to cover the cost of that salary that they're covering. Obviously, tax credits is not the same as getting cash in your hand to pay those bills, but it is something and hopefully that will make that a little less painful. The other act that recently passed was Emergency Paid Sick Leave Act. This requires you to provide 80 hours of paid sick leave on top of whatever you're currently offering and it can be used for two reasons. One if your employee is quarantined or is experiencing symptoms or if that employee is caring for a person who is experiencing symptoms or a kid out of school.
Ed Avis:
Now, those are two distinct categories and they affect things. If your employee is in that first category, they'll get full pay for those extra two weeks of sick leaves. If they're in the second category, they get only two thirds of their pay. So there's a distinction being made there between those two. And again, tax credits are being made available to help cover those costs. So at the end of the year, you should be able to reclaim that money. Of course, some people are concerned right now how can I get money right now if business is not coming in, if I can't pay the bills, if I can't pay the rent?
Ed Avis:
The SBA Emergency Loans now are available across the country. That's [inaudible 00:08:40] loan. It's a loan not a grant, you have to repay it, but it's better than nothing. Also, some states and cities have loan programs that they have initiated to help their businesses. I know Chicago has $100 million fund, other cities and states have also. So look at your own state and see what's available. There's an article in Forbes that ran the other day that listed state by state the various programs and when I post this video online, I'll include a link to this Forbes article so you can see if what your state or city are offering.
Ed Avis:
As I'm sure you've been paying attention, our Congress is trying to pass a gigantic package that will include billions of dollars for distressed companies and including loans that would be forgiven if you were able to keep your employees. That would be a fantastic thing, it's a little bit tied up right now, but I'm confident eventually, something like that will get passed. Okay, those are kind of the basics, most of the questions that we got through the survey, but like I said, if you have other questions, please submit them via the questions tab and as we go through the rest of this panel discussion today, we will answer those questions.
Ed Avis:
And now I'd like to turn it over to Kevin Howes, executive director of RSA to tell us a little bit about what's going on in his organization. Kevin.
Kevin Howes:
Good morning, Ed, Rick, Kyle, John, and the rest of the reprographic industry. Thanks Ed for putting this together. I believe this is very useful in these distressing times. I just have a couple of things to say from sort of an RSA perspective and talking to my members. And I think that first and foremost, nothing is the same across the country. Due to the breakout and where you are really is affecting business at different levels and what folks are able to do. For instance, California had some early shut downs and numbers there responding for [zirconium 00:11:13] initially than maybe folks elsewhere.
Kevin Howes:
Now, that there are identified P hotspots we're starting to see some more of that zirconium if you will action. I'll talk to what some of that is. Each member is adjusting based on what they're experiencing in what their state or county or even city's doing. For instance, here in Denver, the state of Colorado is not on lock down, but Denver went on lock down yesterday and on a little humor side of things, they decided to make liquor stores part of that and it created a mad rush yesterday afternoon at every liquor store in the city.
Kevin Howes:
People were line up around the block. They actually backed off of that and said those kinds of businesses could stay open if they can execute on safe distancing. So again, just to drive home the point, things seem to be different depending on where you are. In talking to my members in big cities, they're obviously experiencing more of these shutdown measures in trying to execute on being in the central business via the construction end of things.
Kevin Howes:
Some of the more rural members haven't seen this and it was interesting to note that some of them in smaller towns, or rural were still a fairly consistent business level out there. That was interesting for me to learn. What was also interesting to learn from some vendors and some others is it seemed that the south was still operating pretty decently last week, but when I confirmed it with another company late last week, they were starting to feel some of the affects.
Kevin Howes:
So again the experience is different across the RSA, across the US and then even across into Canada in terms of how they're responding. In terms of what members are doing? It's a little bit of everything. Some members have not taken any employer or staffing level actions that typically those are some of the smaller more rural areas, but most members have decided to make some adjustments to staff levels and it's a little bit of everything from 30 to 32 hour workweeks for everyone, rotating staff one week on, one week off.
Kevin Howes:
All the way to some more draconian type actions of furloughs and layoffs. Some have decided to reduce branch location hours and in response just depending on what the situation is in that area relative to the rest. Other interesting things, I've had members talk about trying to maintain their sales and technical staff with a positive and optimistic eye for the other side when we come out of it. And then finally, Ed to your question about some helpful projects, these are just some things I [inaudible 00:14:41] looking off of Twitter and also LinkedIn and one of our members that done this, but it was neat to see they had actually produced some social distancing for graphics.
Kevin Howes:
It looked like a 7-Eleven and whatever the store was had actually placed these six feet or whatever the standard is apart so folks stand on the circle. So for businesses trying to stay open and doing that maybe that's a small type application. Certainly hospital and Covid signage is something that some are able to take care of. I have a member that was actually interested in being creative and creating a home office back office because many of us have been thrust into a home office having never done that before and having to continue to have maybe audio, video calls. Just thought it was a neat application. Again, the RSA is working with its [OEM 00:15:49] partners to provide at home solutions with some of the printer companies and some of the technology companies that are in our portfolio.
Kevin Howes:
So that's really an ion what we're doing. The RSA office itself has employees remotely. We have the technology to do that. So we're taking it very seriously in trying to participate as good citizens in flattening the curve. That's it.
Ed Avis:
Great, thanks, Kevin. I like that application of the floor graphics. I've heard that here in Chicago too, that some of the grocery stores have done that. That makes a lot of sense. That's good to hear that some members are able to get some work out of that. Okay, now, let's turn to Rick Bosworth, president of RMX Network. Rick can you fill us in on what's going on there?
Rick Bosworth:
Sure, thanks, Ed. First off, I have to agree with Kevin in the fact that across North America there are differing rules and differing experiences in the part of the ownest on all of our companies is to dig into their local rules and regulations and see if they can leverage those to their advantage in order to maximize their companies. We are supporting our network, RMX's, a North American private network of print service providers. What we have done over the last three weeks basically centers around five areas of concentration.
Rick Bosworth:
I'll just touch on what those are. We have continued network engagement, by that I mean we have shared information between our partner companies specifically with our business owners. We're keeping most all of our discussions at a high level. There's a lot of information that goes on through our communities that operate 24, seven. People in production, people in sales, people in admin, technical people are all in conversation all the time.
Rick Bosworth:
But what we've done is raised the bar just a bit to get to owners specifically for shared information. We have... when I say that, value of that comes from the fact that this is now confidential information within that format with trusted partners and we are sharing both crisis and process protocols at that level in order to get people to address their issues and the common issues as fast as possible. The second thing we're emphasizing is communication.
Rick Bosworth:
We've established continuing owners conference calls, we started that last week. We're planning to do two calls per week where we have anywhere from 50 to 100 participants on any call. Last Thursday's call was on the high side of that and we were pleased to see the participation at that level. We're being asked for more information and we're scheduling at least two calls per week for owners only.
Rick Bosworth:
We're being proactive and we're accelerating our communications and programs with our vendor community. We have just like anybody else, we have relationships with vendors. Our people were working over the weekend with several vendors on trying to get information that was impactful to production and we got great responses from companies like HP and Cannon. And I figured they probably didn't have anything to do over the weekend because they couldn't tell a week from the weekend because everybody's in a down position at this point.
Rick Bosworth:
And they were responding at that time so we were happy to see that. The third thing we're concentrating on is job sharing through the network. We have capability throughout North America to produce jobs in many locations. We also have technologies in certain areas that are not available in others. So companies can go out and they do a phenomenal job of working together in order to be able to produce and install or deliver product in one market that maybe unavailable in the originating markets. So there's real opportunity through the network to do that. Fourth, we have been sharing on a separate community shared revenue opportunities, particular markets, new verticals, successful applications and suggested opportunities.
Rick Bosworth:
As you might imagine, you probably already know, I'm probably not telling you anything new, that this is thrap to our business can also open up opportunities. And if you look around and you see what your clients and customers where their new pain points are, you can find opportunities in what we're doing through RMX is to share those opportunities wherever we can. And lastly, virtual education programs. At our RMX we provide education programs through our own partners and through outsource services things like sales, production, technical process, installation, all of those are addressed at a high level for all of the RMX partners.
Rick Bosworth:
We normally have as does RSA, we normally have a couple onsite meetings where each year and they're very valuable to get companies together and to get them to share ideas on a one-on-one, face-to-face situation. April is coming, but April is not going to provide the opportunity to have that, so we are going virtual with that in order to be able to provide the information that was to be provided by our own companies on presentations and discussions, so we will be producing online conferences, workshops, and training to all of our partners.
Rick Bosworth:
And we're looking for an enthusiastic reception to that. So those are the five things we're doing at RMX Network and we hope it helps our companies. Anything we can do to support them and to support the industry, we're more than happy to do so. That's it, Ed.
Ed Avis:
Great. All right, thank you Rick. Appreciate that. I think a key takeaway there is to look for your customers pain points and figure out if there's some way to help them. I think that's a great idea. I know that around here in Chicago, I've seen a lot of restaurants with nice big banners announcing that they now have take out and delivery. Clearly someone is making money printing those signs. And I got a nice image from Cushing the other day, they created a gigantic graphic which is right across a hospital front side says, "Wash your hands."
Ed Avis:
There is opportunity there. I think that is a message that we want to continue sharing with the industry. Look for the opportunity if you're able to, if you're able to work, if you're able to stay open, see what you can find. Okay, now, I'm going to turn over to John Lipari. John is the president of Plan & Print Systems in Syracuse. John, what can you tell us what's going on there on the front lines?
John Lipari:
The employees as well as myself pretty much walk around in a state of uncertainty. Last Friday, we filed for an exemption for being a central business, which it was Friday afternoon, Saturday afternoon, I got an answer indicating we were... excuse me, as long as our work were related to the construction industry according to their information getting printed, downloaded, et cetera.
John Lipari:
So that brought up the question about large format color display graphics department, is that considered essential? And what to do with those employees? Fortunately, we were able to move those employees to a large archiving project for a hospital that is in the process of having a beam built. So we got a little lucky there with timing because the hospital is very essential.
John Lipari:
But up until Friday, business pretty much was as usual. Phones ringing, supply orders coming in, service calls for small and large format, but Monday morning, inbound phone calls and counter pickups became few and far between and service calls pretty much are nonexistent, which tells me that there's not a lot of people working in their [AEMC 00:26:59] offices right now. One thing that I do know regarding the K-12 market, the administration or school admins are working as normal. We just have no kids or teachers in the school which is very important because cash flow, all of our cash flow comes from school districts and we have seen a little quicker pay cycle from the school districts in the last month.
John Lipari:
Whether that's them getting paper work off their desk before they don't work or I don't know. Another thing we've noticed, we've received messages from some of our customers slash prospects that are larger A3 and A4 placement purchase decisions have been grounded until further notice. So that's a big hit. Interesting things we haven't heard from any traditional vendors other than the two from Michigan yesterday, [KIP and Azon 00:28:08] and I saw Cannon has a webinar for photographers. Other than that, I haven't heard from any of them.
John Lipari:
So I don't know if that means business is normal or not. But to date, we have not had any supply chain issues with engineering bond, bins or cartons. Some of the specialty inkjet products have been harder to find, I don't know if that's related, things like fine art paper, clear film, things like that. Otherwise, I spend a lot of my time trying to sort through the abundance of compliance boltings regarding the FCCRA EFMLEA, love those acronyms. So that's pretty much what's going on here.
Ed Avis:
Excellent, thank you John. It's good to hear at least you are deemed essential and I hadn't realized you had to apply to do that. That's good information. So attendees who are listening if you are wondering, John is in New York, but I'm not sure what the situation is in other states, but evidently at least in New York, you need to apply to be considered essential. John, thank you. I appreciate that.
John Lipari:
You welcome.
Kevin Howes:
Hey ed, this is Kevin. Sorry, I just wanted to comment quickly on something that John mentioned.
Ed Avis:
Sure.
Kevin Howes:
I did do touch points with the major vendors last week so Cannon, HP, KIP all have inventory of both equipment and parts. There is a hiccup in the market on the HP 2600 two roll, frankly that's a forecast issue or had been an ongoing forecast issue. Maybe slightly related to Covid, but really not, but my understanding from both HP and the distribution community is that product is hitting the shores right now or at the end of the month. So there should be some availability for that product, but I talked to [Rich Raymor 00:30:25], they're good.
Kevin Howes:
They were good out until at least May. KIP ironically said they were good through the summer and HP is good right now. On the paper side, I did talk to one of my vendors and said there's plenty of supplies so to confirm what John heard up in Syracuse for core products, I don't think there's much to be concerned about.
Ed Avis:
That's good to hear. Thanks for sharing that Kevin. It's good to hear the supply chain at least for now is in good shape and let's hope that that continues and pace. Okay, let's turn to Kyle Batsford. Kyle is the VP of Palomar Reprographics in Carlsbad. Kyle, fill us in on what's going on with you.
Kyle Batsford:
Thanks Ed. Yeah, it's been a little interesting here for us. We're in Southern California in North San Diego County so about a week and half ago people started working remotely. And once we saw that things dropped off very quickly. With all of our events, signage, graphics, and things we were doing for people that were having upcoming seminars, all of that stuff stopped almost overnight as people started canceling events and ratcheting that in so that was a little disappointing.
Kyle Batsford:
We had some exterior signage jobs as well that those got put on hold so those are always a blow to the gut there when you get that. And then as things started going along, once San Francisco, the Bay Area there, when they started their shelter in place, everybody in California kind of took notice and really started ratcheting back. Last week we had very few calls, very few customers coming in. We did have a few orders and as we talked with our construction clients, we were asking them how they were doing, what was going on, and one client had... they do hotel renovations, and they were doing a project up in the Bay Area that got fast tracked since they had to shut everything down.
Kyle Batsford:
So they were able to move up their timelines with renovating that. And so we started reaching out to all of our construction clients that have things going on to see what they're doing, not sure what was going to happen and then Thursday night, Gavin Newsom, announced that starting immediately everybody shelters in place. So it was pretty chaotic on Friday, what we needed to do. As we were looking at things and talking with people in other industries, we made the difficult decision to go ahead and lay our people off so that they have the opportunity to collect benefits.
Kyle Batsford:
It's one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. I've been staying in contact with them just to make sure everybody's doing okay and we're helping them out where we can. And then of course as business gets better, we'll be bringing them back on, but oddly enough Monday, I had expected to wrap up a few jobs, it's just family in here now as we're a family business and we started getting a lot of calls coming in. We had people uploading jobs, some of the things that I was planning on taking care of to let our clients know what's going on, we weren't able to get to because it was just now having to try and get all of this stuff taken care of for people.
Kyle Batsford:
Turns out here in California, like you said Ed, that the construction industry is deemed essential so as such since we support them, we're able to get away with that. California is really loose right now with what is considered essential, they're not cracking down on people so we have one client that they had everybody working in their office, which was kind of weird. But other than that, we've had stuff coming in which has been surprising. A couple of clients have decided to do some scan jobs for their projects they have that have been sitting there. They're using this opportunity to continue to do more.
Kyle Batsford:
We're just playing it by ear right now, but as we go we definitely planned for the worse there, which was unfortunate having to let our staff go. But it appears to us that this is going to be a bit longer term. As I've talked with other people in completely different industries with what they're doing and what they're doing, that's kind of what the theme has been with their leadership that they're trying to hunker down in making the cuts they need to make because they're planning on this being a couple of months instead of just a week or two.
Kyle Batsford:
We've done the same thing here and all of our supply chain is intact. I've talked with every single one of suppliers to make sure that we can get paper, make sure that we can get custom printed services, we've again have people coming in for us with doing mailings. And one benefit to us a couple of our competitors have decided to close and let everybody know that. So now clients are scrambling trying to find people to get their stuff taking care of.
Kyle Batsford:
So we've implemented here at the office that we're not doing any... it's all contactless pickup, so when people have orders that need to be picked up, we schedule a time, we put it out front for them or we'll put it in their vehicle if they have a truck or if they have their trunk open. So we completely limit that contact. Deliveries, at this point, we're not doing them. We're using FedEx, but we're not doing any kind of markup on any of that shipping. A lot of our clients have been working remotely so we've been sending stuff all over the county here now.
Kyle Batsford:
And FedEx, they're doing gangbusters, so we really haven't seen an issue with how we'll be able to support people. It just is a matter of how much work we're going to be getting in between now and the next couple of weeks.
Ed Avis:
All right, thank you, Kyle. Good to hear that you are at least staying busy for the time being and able to serve those clients who were being served by your competitors before. Attendees we do have a lineup of questions and comments, but please keep them coming. If you have any questions, Kyle was our last panelist, so I'm going to jump into the questions now. One point I wanted to make was that yesterday I spoke with the public relations person from ABC, that's Associated Builders and Contractors and I asked her if they had any longer term prognosis and she said, "No, that they don't feel it's right to do that yet."
Ed Avis:
But she did note that right before the crisis hit, they had recorded that construction was there was a nine month back log on construction. So her feeling was hopefully that will carry over and when things improve we can pick up where we left off. So that's the only real long-term news that we have. So let me jump into some of these comments and questions. I'm taking them a little bit out of order because some of them require a little bit of participation. We have a question here, does anyone have sales statistics to share up or down, percents down or up this time last year?
Ed Avis:
So that's a question to panelist and if you have any information of that type yet, please just submit it on the questions tab and we can share that with other people. And let me remind you also share your innovations. If any of you are doing any kind of interesting work, please share that and I can share that with others. Okay, we had an attendee who's at a shop in North Carolina, she says, we've been told that if you print for hospitals, construction, banks, et cetera, that you were essential too. So that's good to hear. North Carolina falls under that category and I'm guessing that most places you can get away with that.
Ed Avis:
Now here's a question regarding the loans. Do the forgivable loans you mentioned, assuming you keep your employees, have means testing associated with it? In other words, can you be a relative healthy company and still get helped to prevent you from coming an unhealthy company financially speaking? I don't know, but I have not heard that there's means testing for those forgivable loans. But I will do a little more research on that and post the answer when we post the video of this webinar.
Ed Avis:
Let me keep going here. This is a question for John Lipari. John, what department did you contact to see if you were deemed an essential business? John, can you answer that?
John Lipari:
Yeah, Empire State Development.
Ed Avis:
Is that a state office or something?
John Lipari:
Yeah, it's part of New York State for sure.
Ed Avis:
Okay. All right, hopefully that answers that attendees question. Here's a comment from Camille Vieux of Commercial Capital, she notes that their business is considered essential, even though most people are working from home, she says that business has been slightly slower but deals are still coming in. So if you use Commercial Capital for leasing services, you can still get service from them.
Ed Avis:
Here is some suggestions from Joseph Szobody of Reproconnect. He says, plan on a lockdown in your area even if there isn't one yet. That's a good idea, stock up. Joseph asks can one person work in the shop, running the printers with the rest working remotely? Good question. Can the phone system be accessed remotely or do calls forwarded? Does the website have an optimal online print order process setup? So those are three key questions to ask yourself if you are facing a lockdown which probably most of you will at one point or another. So again can one person run that shop if everyone else is working remotely, can your phones be forwarded or can the system be accessed remotely and do you have an online print order process that is working well.
Ed Avis:
Joseph and I have communicated recently, Reproconnect is offering a version of their service for free to members for a stretch of time, so I'll post some information about that too. Now, here's to [Joel's 00:41:31] question about percentage change from last year. Joseph Szobody here answers I don't have a comparison from a year ago handy, but I can say that last Friday was down 25% from normal and yesterday was down 40% from normal. This is looking at online print orders across approximately 230 print shops.
Ed Avis:
So that's some very good data there showing the dramatic drop in what's going on. Okay, I've got a couple of other questions, John this is again for you. How long did it take to hear back from New York designating that you were essential?
John Lipari:
Under 24 hours.
Ed Avis:
Great. Okay, this reader asks, or this attendee asks, can you please discuss whether companies in states that have shelter in place or stay home orders are staying open for business? To that question, I think we can go back to the question of essential businesses and I think that as Kyle noted in California where they are on a stay at home order, his business is open, but two of his competitors closed, so it's by case by case. And as I noted I think what has to happen here is somewhat of your own judgment or your own common sense. I think it's safe to say that repro shops can be deemed as essential if they are serving the construction community because the construction community in most states so far is deemed essential.
Ed Avis:
So if you're serving that industry, it stands to reason that you are also essential, but you got to use your common sense. If your work area is not safe for your employees because of whatever reasons, then it doesn't matter whether you're essential or not. It's not like you're a hospital, so I think you need to use your common sense there. Here's another statistics comment, this business in the Seattle area sales are down 50% in the last two weeks. Okay, that is the end of the questions that we have submitted, does anyone else have anything? Speakers, panelists, do you want to add anything to followup on what we've talked about?
Ed Avis:
Okay, great. Well, we've covered a lot of ground on this presentation. I hope that attendees found it useful and I hope that you can take some information from this and apply it in your own businesses. Let me thank the panelists again for your time this morning and your insight and your information. And let me remind you that I will be posting this recording of this webinar on the APDSP site later today, along with answers to some of these questions. And we'll also work to transcribe this presentation and hopefully by Friday, by the time the Friday newsletter goes out, hopefully, we'll have a transcription ready and we can post that in the newsletter and people can read that.
Ed Avis:
Now, sometimes that's easier to skim-through than a recording. Okay, again, thank you everybody for your time today and let's keep moving forward and keep the knowledge that this will pass. Thank you everybody.
Kevin Howes:
Thank you, Ed.