40 | practical living
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Working through the Lockdown We speak to local business owners about the impact of the recent confinement...
JOANNA leggett leggett immobilier We used the time during lockdown to source PPE, rearrange our offices and create new working protocols. We have introduced one-way systems to our office space as well as ensuring social distancing, with some internal doors removed entirely. We’ve also made extensive use of electronic signatures, a trend that is set to explode. Throughout lockdown, we were offering “virtual” tours of our property listings to
potential buyers. We are now able to undertake real life visits and the market has gone mad. We had more offers accepted on properties in one June week than in any time during our 21 years of trading! Our visits are undertaken with the greatest of care. We make sure that the vendor is OK to receive visitors and we ask buyers to limit numbers, travel in their own car, make sure that they have no symptoms as well as asking them to wear PPE and to use hand sanitiser. www.leggett-immo.com
MARTIN DIX BRICO 16 We run a paint colour-matching service and, since colours change with the light, we’ve always had customers coming in and out all the time. The lockdown meant we had to look at all aspects of our business, from supply (our base paint is from the UK) to getting the paint to the customer. We increased our stocks of paints to overcome transport issues and started to supply paint to
www.livingmagazine.fr
customers as the lockdown lifted. We’ve now put in place
Paul elliott ecopower europe We install heating and solar energy systems and so the lockdown stopped our sites overnight added to which the supply of parts dried up while the transport rules were worked through. Each year we review what we are selling against market opportunities and this year we had already been looking at wood burners for outdoors which are more environmentally friendly than gas-fired patio heaters. It was clear people would be staying at home for their holidays and investing in their outdoor spaces so we moved forward with our plans and are launching clean burn stoves.
My partner, Lindsey, has been finding partners so we can work together and we are confident that we will make back the revenue that we lost while unable to work. I’m back on sites now with social distancing in place and have a backlog of jobs to manage so the rest of this year is already looking busy. It’s been challenging but we now have a great new product line to sell. www.ecopowereurope.com
CARO FEELY chateau feely
We’re a vineyard, wine school and accommodation provider, all of which rely on people coming and trying our wines and staying
an appointment system and invested in signage, perspex shielding and PPE as well as adding a Drive service (call & collect). It takes a little getting used to, and it was frustrating not being able to get our paint to customers who wanted to repaint their homes during confinement! But overall, we’re happy with the way the business is now running and know that we are keeping our customers and ourselves safe. www.btpcrownpaints.com
here. As soon as the shutdown was discussed we knew we had to make changes and so we decided to accelerate our online plans. After some long days and nights, we launched 4 categories of virtual experiences - a wine discovery course with videos and documents, private virtual wine tasting parties where you join in from your own home, live events around wine and food pairing, and virtual corporate and team events. While setting them up was intensive, we are delighted with the uptake and we are reaching new markets that we couldn’t before. The experiences are a new line of business for us, one that will remain long after Coronavirus, and already some of our new virtual clients are planning to visit once they can travel safely. It’s a silver lining to this cloud. The grape harvest cannot be picked virtually, though, and so that is our next challenge! www.chateaufeely.com/virtual/
