There is no denying that the pandemic has changed the entire world. If you look at your life in late 2021 compared to what it was at the beginning of 2020, most people will say that there are some dramatic differences. Some may have lost a loved one to Covid-19, while others may have changed careers because they lost their previous job.
You might feel like now is the worst possible time to start a small business or try to get a new startup off the ground. It’s true that there is uncertainty now in many niches, and that might be reason enough for you to shy away from launching a new company. However, some people are still doing it, showing how irrepressible the human spirit is.
Launching a new small business in 2021’s latter half may not be as crazy of an idea as you might think at first. Let’s talk about why now might be the right time to move forward with your startup idea.
Nothing Lasts Forever
All business concepts and ways of operating them rise and fall. In IT, domainless empires are becoming prominent, where before, they were rare. In just about any industry you might name, there are boom times and down periods.
That is why it seems crazy to some people to start a new business right now. It’s almost impossible to see beyond the pandemic to what lies on the other side.
Still, as inconceivable as it seems at this moment, Covid-19 is not going to be around forever. Even if it is, it will eventually dwindle to the point where only a handful of people contract it each year.
The point we’re making is that humans are resilient. The pandemic is still a threat right now, and variants are surging in some parts of the country, but several industries are finding ways to evolve in the face of this uncertainty. You might be able to open a business if you can pinpoint a niche that is thriving, even while others struggle.
It Depends on What You Plan to Open
To that end, you should think about your startup idea very carefully if you do plan on going through with it at the moment. There are certain industries that you should probably avoid if you want to open a small business.
For instance, if you want to open a restaurant right now, that’s asking for trouble. While there is plenty of real estate because many businesses have shuttered, you might not have so many people who are willing to come and eat in your new location in person. There are too many people who have an immunocompromised condition, and they will not risk in-person eating, even if they’ve had the vaccine and the upcoming booster shot.
That is why you need to find a niche that is doing well in the midst of the pandemic. For instance, maybe you want to start selling products using an online-only model, also called eCommerce. That is one of the safest things you can do right now if you ever consider opening an establishment safe.
The eCommerce Model Makes Sense at This Moment
The online or eCommerce business model makes sense at the moment because you’re allowing the world to see your products and services or have access to them, and you are not demanding that they leave their homes and come to you. If you think about it, this model makes sense in 2021 and beyond, because more than ever, people want to shop from home.
There is a dazzling array of services and products that you can offer online. You can cook food at a physical location and ship it to people using services like Uber Eats or GrubHub. This is a way you can open a restaurant and make money without being in-person customer-reliant.
You might open an Upwork agency where you have a stable of content creators. When someone contacts your agency and wants you to create web content for them, you can hire out your writers. The people who hire you do so from their home or workplace, and you assign them remote workers who never meet them in person.
You might design and offer products for sale online that someone makes via an assembly line several states away. You will never meet these individuals in person who do that work, but again, you’ve discovered a successful online model that can make a profit for everyone.
When Can In-Person Stores Find Success Again?
You might wonder when it will make the most sense to go from a strictly online sales model and back to an in-person one. It may be a year or two years from now. That all depends on how long Covid-19 sticks around and how long it will take to get it under control.
It might also turn out that things will never go back to what they used to be. If several years pass and everyone wants to continue buying things online more than purchasing them in stores, they may not want to ever go back.
Realistically, things will probably get to a point where both things are happening simultaneously. Covid-19 won’t be as much of an issue, and some people will be eager to get back to in-person shopping, while others will want to stick as much as possible to buying things online and getting the items shipped to them. Some individuals already use Amazon to buy nearly everything, and they shun human contact.
For now, if you do have a startup or small business idea, it behooves you to try an online model whenever possible. There’s nothing to say that you can’t open a business where you encourage people to come into your store. The problem is that walk-in crowds are uncertain right now, and they probably will be for quite some time to come. This is the simple reality with the pandemic dragging on.
