Austrian Repro Firm Owner: We Will Master This Crisis

Editor's Note: Below is a letter we received from Andreas Haltmeyer, president of Haltmeyer B2B, the largest reprographics firm in Austria. He describes how coronavirus has affected his business.

     On March 13th the Austrian Government decided on drastic measures to stop the virus

spreading too fast. All shops except grocery stores were closed, as well as all restaurants, hotels, schools, universities, sports facilities and so on. In production facilities a minimum distance of 2 meters has to be kept or face masks to be worn. Gatherings of more than 5 people are not allowed. People are allowed only to go out for absolutely necessary reasons.

     In the last 4 weeks our revenue dropped to about 30%, most of which comes from AEC, because construction sites were still working. We were able get some B2C jobs via our Onlineshop. But most of our usual jobs, which are marketing materials, signage, prints for the educational sector, events and gastronomy, has no demand now.

     The government offers economic aid in different ways: for example, federal backed loans, deferment of taxes and social security contributions, and "Corona short-time work."

     Our business has gone well for the last couple of years, so we have no immediate liquidity issues. We have kept all our 55 employees so far, by using "Corona short-time work" for most of them. This means the company and the employees agree on reduced working hours between 10 percent and 80 percent of their usual time for the next three months. It can be reduced to even 0 percent for some time, but the average time in these months has to be above 10 percent. The employee gets in any case 85 percent of his/her usual salary. The difference to the actual working time is refunded by the government. In our case, we had most of our people working at the minimum of 10 percent time in the last month and so only 10 percent labor costs to cover. That helped a lot.

     The infection rate has dropped decisively, so some measures have been lifted now. Since April 14th small shops (below 400 square meters) are allowed to reopen and so have we. Business is still very slow. Our revenue in the last three day has increased to about 50 percent. Gastronomy, events and educational institutions will stay closed for at least another one or two months and I expect low demand from these sectors until autumn.

      I am convinced that our company will master this crisis, because of our diversification in different business sectors and our well-developed online services.