‘I Didn’t Want to Shut My Doors’: Businesses Find Ways to Survive

FutureFuel GiveBack, which starts on Monday, finds cash-back savings from the goods that a borrower is buying online among some 450 brands. That money is used to pay down the principal on the borrower’s loan.

Other companies see the “work from home” move accelerating workplace issues they were pushing for already.

JumpCloud provides cloud-based security for its clients’ servers. Most of them wanted to ensure that employees could gain access only while in the office, said Rajat Bhargava, the company’s co-founder and chief executive, but companies now have to provide secure access to their workers at home.

The pandemic “has been a catalyst to shifting to the cloud,” Mr. Bhargava said. “Going forward, this is going to be the new normal.”

Quick responses for businesses that counted on human interaction may be even more essential.

After five years of building furniture out of wood he found washed up on Florida beaches, Aaron Moreno was doing the kind of large-scale projects he had hoped to do with his company, Drift, in West Palm Beach, Fla. His craftsmanship drew attention, and he was soon creating tables, doors and cabinetry for restaurants and mansions in Palm Beach County.

Now his workers have switched to building baby gates, shelving and small coffee tables. Everything has to be small enough for one person to build and for the customer to put it in place without help.

“I didn’t want to shut my doors,” Mr. Moreno said. “I have a lot of quality craftsmen who have taken years to put together, and I didn’t want to lose them.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/your-money/small-business-survival-strategy-coronavirus.html