Geauga Businesses Project Losses through 2020

June 11, 2020 by Ann Wishart

While highly-leveraged big-box companies across America scramble to survive the economic effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic, most Geauga County businesses who responded to a recent survey expect to weather the storm.

“It’s not all gloom and doom, but there is going to be hardship,” said Geauga Growth Partnership Executive Director Kimm Leininger in a phone interview June 8.

Shortly after Ohio shut down all nonessential operations in March to forestall the spread of COVID-19, GGP and a task force of economic development professionals in the county sent out a survey and received 110 responses.

In the survey summary GGP published June 4, Leininger said 80 responses came from essential businesses and 86 said they had lost business because of the shutdown. Although the survey did not provide a statistically significant taste of local companies’ situations, it did give the task force enough feedback to create strategies to assist them.

Projected financial losses for the third and fourth quarter of 2020 were painful. More than half of respondents expect to lose money, less than a third think their revenue might increase a bit and the rest didn’t know, according to the summary.

“The average loss industries estimated to be is $290,000, with manufacturing projecting over $1 million in lost revenue,” the survey results said.

Retail, manufacturing and professional and consulting services made up more than half the returned surveys. Among those sectors, about 15 said they faced the possibility of closing permanently.

“Every industry reported financial impacts, and the top industries that expressed lost business due to COVID-19 include construction, nonprofit organizations, education, manufacturers, retail and healthcare,” Leininger said.

The purpose of the survey was to help the task force pinpoint the most at-risk businesses and reach out to offer them advice and support.

The group took the call list and split it up among its members. For instance, Middlefield Village Economic Development Director Leslie Gambosi-McCoy and Chardon Community Development Administrator Steve Yaney contacted operations in their areas, Leininger said.

Small businesses that were having trouble accessing funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program were referred to local sources.

“We were able to build bridges with local banks,” Leininger said.

Just getting information out to worried business owners about possible options gave the task force, that initially met weekly, plenty to address.

“We had lots and lots of information sessions,” Leininger said, adding the sessions were, of necessity, carried out virtually through Zoom or other online services.

The task force also made use of regional assistance.

Many small business owners and managers were unprepared for a shutdown and had a lot of questions about how to proceed, whether they were essential businesses or not, Leininger said.

“The Small Business Development Center in Lakewood had a five-part series for CEOs on things to think about,” she said, such as how to manage cash flow.

With so many of the county’s nearly 4,000 small businesses owned or managed by the Amish, getting virtually-presented information out to them posed its own challenges, Leininger said.

Some were able to follow webinar presentations using business cell phone Internet connections and the members of the task force who were consulting with them could print out much of the material and deliver it, she said.

“Some of them just needed a little bit of information to get the pieces of the puzzle in place,” Leininger said, adding nonprofits such as the Red Tulip project benefitted from guidance they received from the webinars.

It would appear a crisis has a silver lining for improved communication and networking. The task force offered some lifesaving advice and assistance to businesses they might not have known existed. Other businesses discovered resources they didn’t need before, Leininger said.

“We’ve seen new companies reach out to us and want to join (GGP),” she said.

While the road to reopening the economy in Geauga County could still be rocky for a while, residents can help.

“We in Geauga County have to support our small businesses. They need us more than ever,” Leininger said.