RESILIENCY IN A TIME OF COVID.
A positive story in times of difficulty is for us a breath of fresh air. And when we learned that one of our fellow DOP members has taken not-so-optimal situation and pivoted their strategy into a positive outcome, it made us so happy that we wanted to share it with you. This week DOP team member Molly Antoon caught up with DOP member, Dean Caravelis with Blezoo to discuss resiliency during the era of COVID.

Q&A
Molly: Living through a pandemic like this affects everyone differently. What has surprised you the most over the last six months?

Dean: I’ve never had a stretch of time feel like an eternity, but I would say that the last six months have felt like a year or two. I also never thought I would shave my head again, but I’ve done that since March and, honestly, it has brought back some college nostalgia even though I don’t think it’s the best look for me.
Molly: How has office life at Blezoo changed during COVID-19? Have any of the roles of your staff shifted?

Dean: We haven’t been in the office since the 2nd week of March, but since we’ve always been set-up fully on the cloud with MacBook laptops our work has been seamless. Although our roles have not shifted much, I would say the biggest shift has been in what we sell and how much harder we have to work on the back end to ensure that factories are open, stock is available and that people can actually receive a delivery at the address they have designated. I know that when the pandemic started a lot of us thought it was going to be a ’slow down’ but in many ways, for me personally, my work hours have ramped up. I have felt everything from optimism, hope, excitement, depression, frustration and everything in-between in the last 6 months.

Molly: Did any of the changes you made to your business during COVID-19 end up leading to positive outcomes?

Dean: Since we create solutions for our customers, instead of finding customers for our solutions, we have an extremely flexible company. Around March, our customers started asking us for PPE-related products, and since events and all in-person gatherings went away overnight, we simply listened to what our customers needed and began providing that. This helped us bridge the gap in lost sales, and it allowed me to keep my entire staff at full pay. The most positive outcome was that we were able to deliver much-needed supplies by using our supply chain.

Molly: I heard a little bit about Blezoo's new "experiences" you are planning to roll out in the near future. Can you explain a bit about what these "experiences" are and what they mean for the future of marketing during a pandemic?

Dean: We love creating high impact mailers. With the high demand for virtual events and remote learning, there has been a really big demand for this recently, and we’ve been able to flex our creative muscles. We used to call these types of mailers ‘campaigns', but during the pandemic, I decided to re-brand them into something people understand, and this is how “Experience-in-a-Box” was born. Everyone wants an experience, and we think that with our process, creativity and pedigree we can deliver that to your favorite customers.

Molly: Your innovative marketing at Blezoo is really inspiring. Do you have any advice on resiliency for businesses who are trying to overcome obstacles during this time?

Dean: I would say that if anyone says, “We’ve tried that before and it didn’t work,” you should remove them from the Zoom chat and move forward with trying again. This is your time to experiment, to challenge everything, and to create a vision for what the world will look like post-COVID. If you don’t have a vision, and you aren’t trying new things, then you are at the mercy of the waves that are coming at you.

Thank you, Dean for sharing your story with us!

*If you have a story you would like to share with the DOP community, please let us know.