How Casely Has Navigated the COVID-19 Pandemic

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have faced challenges as a business owner that I never have before. It’s unpredictable, everchanging and quite frankly, a bit daunting. At Casely, our strategies leading up to and during the outbreak have allowed us to keep every employee on board and remain profitable. 

 

Like many businesses across the country, we have had hiccups with our supply chain over the past six weeks, causing many of our top selling cases to go out of stock. We took a look at which cases haven’t sold as well as we expected and saw an opportunity to market these designs more than we have been. With a few new advertisements on social media, we were able to move these products off the shelves and into customers hands. It was a great lesson in that a product may not be selling as well because it’s not getting the same marketing push as current top-selling products. 

 

We’ve also been focused on ramping up charitable giving during this time. We partnered with the company Ivory Ella and joined their #SpreadHope campaign. It marked the first time we offered a product where 100% of net proceeds are donated to charity. I believe in the near future we’ll see more organizations with similar values collaborate together to promote a cause or give to a charity. Brands working together has the potential to make a bigger impact, drive more sales and increase brand awareness. A key part of our branding strategy going forward will be finding companies and people to work with that share our mindset.

 

We just launched an Artist Initiative, where we are accepting submissions for future case designs. We want to help creative women and men who have lost work because of COVID-19 and will be financially compensating any artist we work with as well as promoting their designs and their body of work on our social media platforms. We wanted to find a way to directly help individuals in our community and we’re so excited to release these designs down the road.

 

The creation of the #EveryCaseCounts initiative when we launched in 2017 gave us the opportunity to donate to a different charity or organization each month. Recent examples include the Global Fund for Women and Blessings in a Backpack. A portion of profits from every case sold gives back and we believe it’s our responsibility to do our part assisting those in need. This campaign has become the backbone of our charitable giving over the years, and we’re using it now to assist in providing relief for those impacted by the pandemic.

 

I’ve recently seen a collective growth in brands' desire to give back and I expect charitable giving to increase even after our world is able to contain COVID-19. It will be very important for brands to find their niche as to what they want to get behind and support. While one company may donate to increasing school supplies, another may donate to renovating baseball fields. Companies will have to determine what makes the most sense for their business and how they can most effectively do good.

 

We have found this time to be so valuable as we’ve been able to hit a “reset button” and look internally as to how our business is being run. For us, we’re looking at money we’ve been spending yet not receiving a valuable enough return on. We’ve cut or scaled back a number of SaaS companies we work with as it financially made sense to limit or sever ties. Having said that, we’ve also realized that there are ways to grow our business and scale what we’ve been successful doing. We’ve recently launched an SMS messaging service for the first time and have seen $250,000 in sales in the first eight days. Workflow structure and product launches are other areas we’ve delved into during this time.

 

None of what I’ve mentioned is possible without our incredible and supportive customers. As always, connecting with our audience and building loyalty with customers is vital to the growth and success of our business. We’ve taken certain chances during this time, such as a series of Instagram Live videos, ranging from yoga classes to a hand lettering tutorial. We’ve launched our TikTok company account this past month as well. We’re listening to the feedback from our audience to see if they’re interested in the new things we’re trying out. We’ve been so fortunate to see our business grow while so many across the globe are quarantined and online, and we feel taking the risk to explore new platforms and use platforms differently will pay off in the coming months and years.