Startup Stash - Warehouse Clubs & The Cost of Ads 📦

But not all small businesses can afford this which has had a tangible effect on sales traffic, according to Ruth and Sam, founders of Trippy Tuesday, a small business that makes candles and jewellery. When they launched their business two years ago, Instagram accounted for 90% of their store traffic. They used no advertising, simply posting about their products. Now, Instagram accounts for just 70% of their sales traffic, and their posts have gone from receiving “thousands” of likes to only “hundreds”.

Today, you can’t grow a new business on Instagram without ploughing a load of money into it whereas you used to be able to grow organically. This makes it difficult for startups with limited funds to compete with big organisations.

Thankfully, in 2020, the cost per click (CPC) of advertising on Instagram dropped due to the pandemic. But this doesn’t mean much respite for small businesses. According to Instagram, 87% of people say that an influencer has driven them to make a purchase. However, getting an influencer status, with limited spending capacity is a herculean task. Brands with fewer than 10,000 followers are penalised because they cannot get full access to all of Instagram’s business features until they hit that milestone.

The share of U.S. small businesses with vaccine mandates has jumped in most big cities in recent weeks, as per weekly U.S. Census Bureau Small Business Pulse Survey.

In New York City, which put in place one of the strictest private-sector mandates of the country in December, one third of small firms are asking their workers to get shots, surpassing San Francisco, which until recently had the highest ratio of businesses mandating inoculation.

A recent survey by Brivo Inc. and MRI Software found that 53% of U.S. workers want employers to record proof of vaccination. The poll showed that more than half of respondents have safety and health concerns about returning to the workplace.

Despite all this, however, the national picture remains bleak and unhopeful. Nationally, the percentage of small businesses requiring Covid-19 vaccines rose only slightly to 13% during December. A few cities, in fact, saw a decline compared with the end of September, including Miami, Philadelphia, San Diego and Dallas, which has the smallest rate at just 6.9%.

Covid-19 truly brought a number of small businesses to their knees. Many were forced to shut shop and those that remained open are struggling to pick up the pieces of their shattered businesses.

Warehouses are providing small businesses with fresh capital, visibility and a lot of help! 

In 2020, Sam's Club - a members only warehouse club - stated that it would be donating $1 million to a national nonprofit, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), which offers financial support to small businesses. 

It also created visibility for some small businesses by collecting information about how they were surviving the pandemic and sharing it with customers via social media sites and email. This reminded area residents of the small businesses around them, gathering much needed support.

Not just this, clubs can do a lot more…. 

• In direct response to the retail supply chains problems, warehouse clubs began offering suppliers resources to assist in speeding up the onboarding and other processes to get products to consumers faster and safer.
• In terms of delivery, the clubs offered convenient options like curbside pickup and online delivery so small-business customers can get products in a quick, affordable, and timely manner.
• The clubs encouraged small businesses to implement safety measures during the pandemic like placing Plexiglass shields at checkout counters making customers feel comfortable and safer while they shopped.
• The clubs also help small businesses by offering them virtually anything they need at low prices, in bulk, and all in one central place. As a result, more people are signing up for warehouse club memberships. making it a win-win situation for both warehouse clubs and small businesses, helping one another during a tumultuous time.