So what’s a nascent small business meant to do when the primary means of introducing their product to potential customers goes away? The term ‘pivot’ has been bandied about a lot recently, and I have considered how that might look for Maple X, a company with one product.

In sports, a pivot presents you with options that you might not have considered – or even had – if you had stood firm. As enticing as my prior vision was for Maple X, our world has shifted to a physically distanced model, and an alternative option is required for consideration.

The version of the website that was published several months ago was simply a placeholder for when I wanted to do more than just tell the story of Maple X. The intention was for the website to serve as an information conduit to support the physical introductions we would be doing over the next few years. Now it will have to serve as our primary sales platform. That’s all.

Being a fairly low-cost / high weight / fragile product, shipping seemed to be a far less viable option than purchasing it at your local grocery store. It would cost as much in shipping to most of Canada than the value of the underlying product, essentially doubling the expense. International shipping? Triple.

Many local small business groups have organized virtual sales events during this lockdown economy, and we’ve participated in several such initiatives. Offering free contactless delivery to customers in these virtual events has opened up an angle. We’ve extended our delivery range out of town from Ottawa to Toronto, to coincide with the occasional commercial delivery.

The next pivot could be in a different direction, or perhaps along that same path, or on the other foot, maybe, so, like… walking. Pretty soon we’ll get a decent pace going – in whatever direction these pivots may take us. Then we’ll work on running and cutting, and hopefully we can be joined by friends and Frisbees to play with!

Play On!

Derek