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Can Small Business Owners Survive During the 2nd Quarantine? (Part 1)

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@filotasriza3
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It's been a few days here in Greece that we are facing the second wave of the lockdown or as i call it Lockdown Season 2! The only open stores are as in the first quarantine the supermarkets, pharmacies, emergency items stores and delivery/take away regarding restaurants and cafeterias.

Because the situation got worst it was announced that as of today during 9 at night till 5 in the morning, nobody is allowed to leave his house except for the following reasons:

a) Work b) In case of an emergency
c) for a small walk with his pet (only with your pet not alone)

But now let's focus on the small business owners and what's the case with them.

As you get by what i already said most of them had to close their business due to the virus. Regarding, let's say the clothing shops or the technology ones their only option is to sell is via Internet.

It may sound easy enough to just open a website or already have one but note there are costs behind that. Costs regarding the creation, maintenance and most importantly marketing. It's extremely hard for a small store to compete with a big company that has invest tons of money in marketing and it pops up first when you search in google for the relevant product.

Also note that the transporting costs will most likely be higher than the ones of a big company and the reason is quite simple. A big company that sells way more products will strike better deals with any transportation or courier company.

Aren't we all buying from Internet though?

The sort answer is no but it's true that as we are getting more and more tech friendly the percentages of Internet purchases grows bigger. On the other hand in Greece 99% of businesses are considered as small sized businesses so imagine that we have stores everywhere!

Also we have the tendency as Greeks because the weather is most of the time pretty good to go out and it became a habit as well to combine shopping with coffe/food/meet up with friends/walk or all of those cause we are pretty cool!

That means that we go through many stores when shopping and in a way we support a lot of those small businesses mentioned that are now losing a lot of money! Thus we use the internet to buy very specific items or when the weather is bad or we are too bored to go out!

I hope i gave you a picture of what is going on and i will further explain what's the deal with the restaurants/cafeterias as well as what the government measures to help the are and if they are helpful or not

all photos are under creative commons and can be used free

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