Seizing New Opportunities By Riding The Covid E-commerce Boom

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Learn how you can make the most of every season, even the Covid E-commerce boom.

Every year, I’ll post my Valentine’s day message.  Not because I’m a great romantic, but it’s the day that I signed up to a program to learn to create my own online business, and so marks the start of my transition from 20 years of being a corporate lawyer to the world of small online businesses that are run by one or 2 people.

That was back in 2016, and that seems like a lifetime ago now.  This last year, we’ve all been locked down because of COVID-19.  And it could not have come at a worse time for my golf business, the one that I told you about in February last year.  We had just started it then, Dec 2019 to be exact, and I was proudly telling you how we were profitable in just 2 months, because we were an offline business, but were a business that had a strong online presence.

However, we were first and foremost, an offline business, and so when lockdown happened in our third month of business, we were hit hard.

Covid E-commerce Boom: New Challenges – New Opportunities

I believe that every challenge brings new opportunities.  And COVID brought massive new opportunities.  The world changed, and suddenly everyone was online.  People who swore they would never shop online, suddenly had to.  And a year later, these same people are so used to the convenience of online shopping, that they are likely to never stop shopping online.

Amazon’s sales growth nearly doubled, and its online sales growth more than doubled!  Its growth in 2019 was $280 billion, a 20% growth.  Its growth in 2020 was $386 billion, a 38% growth!  Looking at just their online stores business line.  In 2019, that business line grew from $123 billion to over $141 billion – that’s about a 15% growth.  In 2020, that business line grew from $141 billion to $197 billion, that’s a 40% growth!

And that’s no surprise, because people had no choice.

How To Take On New Opportunities Like The Covid E-Commerce Boom

As a business owner, I like certainty, and that means, not reinventing the wheel, but looking for what works and just taking a piece of the action.

And so, this year, I started several e-commerce business lines, all rooted in my personal values and beliefs.  For instance, I believe that families need to eat together, and to eat healthily.  A challenge for most families is that it takes time to prepare good meals.  So, I started a kitchen ware line that helps parents prepare quick healthy meals for their families.

Starting a business in a proven market, that’s aligned with my values and purpose enables me to be fulfilled, and make a living.  But to make a good living, you need to have marketing skills.  In the kitchenware segment, there are products that have been there for years.  The week I launched my first kitchenware product, I pushed the marketing button on Google, Facebook and Amazon, and my product closed its launch week at number 2.  Not bad.

The kitchenware segment also grew through COVID because people couldn’t eat out, and people who ordinarily didn’t cook, started to cook at home, and needed all the help they could get.

Be Equipped To Make Lemonade

The point of sharing all of this is to share that while COVID hit my golf business, it created opportunities to do other things.  As they say, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

The key is, to be ready to make lemonade by having the tools and knowhow, when life gives you lemons.