Guest post by Dr. Clement Chan
Clement is a friend of ours and has been our family’s optometrist for the last 5 years. We asked him to share his experience of how COVID-19 forced his small business (Fremont Eye Centre, Doctors of Optometry) to shut down, how he responded, and what it’s been like since they opened up again last week.
Ever since graduating from optometry school in 2009, I had wanted to open my own practice. In 2015, I was able to fulfill that dream with the establishment of the Fremont Eye Center. Over the next five years, we were able to serve many clients and develop good relationships with them. Then, COVID-19 hit and life changed for everybody.
In early January 2020, when the WHO first reported the emergence of this new disease, it felt far away and we were optimistic that it might not affect us at all. When the news broke that it had become a pandemic, we implemented changes such as more frequent sanitizing and hand washing. With the face-to-face nature of our work as an optometric practice and the lack of access to PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) as it was being directed to hospital and emergency response workers, we soon knew that we could not remain open for long. On March 19, we made the difficult decision to close our doors.
Shortly after our closure, we realized that this would last more than a couple of weeks. Coming to that realization was difficult because we knew would need to pay 100% of our rent while our revenue would plummet to zero. On top of that, no one knew how this was going to play out, and no one knew how long everyone had to stay home.
I decided to lay off my staff and pay them severance so that they could collect EI. We had the full intention of bringing them back once we could open our doors again. I could have laid them off temporarily to avoid paying severance but we felt like it was the least we could do to support them financially. Now that we are open again and our staff are back, I am taking advantage of the government’s temporary wage subsidy program as well as the $40,000 loan we qualified for. As for the government’s rent relief for small businesses, this was not any help to us. Our landlord said they were uncertain whether they would participate, as they would have to give up 25% of their income.
While our doors were closed, we made the most of our time at home, spending quality time with our children and sharing many meals and conversations together. Business-wise, we used that time to attend to aspects that we are usually too busy for. We updated our website, worked on improving our website’s SEO by writing guest blog posts (like this one), and participated in both optometric and business building webinars. We also stayed in touch with our customers and patients via our blog and social media platforms.
Lately, with the province’s plans to slowly re-open the economy, we made preparations for our long anticipated re-opening. New policies and safety measures had to be planned, PPE had to be researched and sourced for our staff. We had to figure out logistics of patient flow in order to maintain physical distance among patients and staff at the office. Physical barriers such as plexiglass had to be put in place and waiting area rearrangements had to be figured out.
Since re-opening on May 19th, we are seeing an overall positive response. Some people are still nervous to come in because even though we have safety precautions in place, we are still an enclosed office space. There are two aspects of our business. First, there’s our optometry services like eye exams, retinal imaging, orthokeratology and urgent eye care. Since re-opening, we have been fully booked and it’s pretty much business as usual. The second aspect of our business is the retail side, where we sell glasses and contact lenses. The pandemic has shifted more people to buying online in general, and that includes eyewear. We’re hoping that many people will realize after their experience online how much they appreciate our in-person quality of service. One thing we are doing is to focus on clients who are looking for premium service and products. We feel confident that our retail business would be minimally impacted.