2020 offered some pretty unprecedented times for everyone, forcing long-standing businesses to close down and shoving the rest of the world into a moment of pure necessity. Some of us hunkered down with our newfound Tiktok addiction and a record breaking amount of Amazon orders while over 4 million of us got entrepreneurial...including Kerassi! In a revelational turn of events, a record breaking number of businesses popped up during the pandemic... an overwhelming amount of which can be attributed to young, female, or POC businesses! If one positive thing can be said about the pandemic, it’s the ushering in of all of these formerly unheard voices.

So, to what can we attribute this start-up boom?

Well, aside from the need to survive financially, the entire year spent at home gave young entrepreneurs the time and the push they needed to focus their creativity, ingenuity, and working knowledge of E-commerce away from corporate pursuit sand toward solving actual real-world problems. Millions of furloughs and some of the most unstable financial moments in our history have created exactly what we needed: a reason to switch up the status quo. According toSalesforce.com, a website that ran a survey-based study on these new businesses, only a quarter of the pandemic entrepreneurs started a business because they needed the money. Over half of the survey participants started their businesses because they wanted to break away from being overly managed and finally be their own boss. Most commonly of all the entrepreneurs surveyed, younger generations, namely millennials and Gen Z, were able to take advantage of their technological experience and pretty much reinvented the world of E-commerce (especially since it was the only one they could access).

So, why does it matter what caused someone to launch their business? It’s simple. Most of these entrepreneurs didn’t start their passion projects for the money, they started them because they’re passion projects. Pandemic entrepreneurs are special because they all saw a window to carry out their dreams and they took the leap in one of the most risky global crises in history. These are businesses that you can trust for quality and for service because they’re businesses with more than just blood, sweat, and tears. They have ingenuity, determination, and an owner that believed in it enough to launch in a pandemic.

How Do Pandemic Businesses Help Consumers?

Thanks to these trailblazers, nine-to-five’s may be a thing of the past... or at least just one of many options. Not only are there more online employment opportunities, but there are literally millions of new amazing causes and businesses to support. Whether you like to support women-owned businesses, POC owned businesses, Earth-conscious businesses, etc., post-pandemic consumers have a greater opportunity to support oppressed communities or pressing causes now more than ever before.

Americans are getting increasingly more aware of civil, ecological, and social issues within the country and how those issues affect Americans as individuals. With this spread of information comes the desire to create positive change. The best way to create positive change in a corporate-run world is to vote with your dollar. This can be seen in huge events such as BLMor as small as Billie being the first women’s razor commercial to actually show body hair. If you need a more concrete demonstration, feel free to visit our website kerassi.com where weem power women, support LGBTQ+, and treasure representation within our streetwear brand. We, as consumers, are in the perfect position to let our voices be heard not only through social media, but through who we choose to support monetarily. Basically, supporting small businesses could be one of the quickest ways to change the country as we know it (and hopefully, the world).

What Does All Of This Mean?

To keep this simple, if you aren’t out there taking advantage of all of the new local, small, philanthropic, or POC businesses, then you’re losing out on a revolutionary customer experience. There’s a reason these businesses have done so well during a time of financial doom: American sare tired of impersonal, unhelpful, cookie-cutter big box stores. Embrace the change! Go to a coffee shop that treats their employees well! Tryout a restaurant that pays their waiters a living wage! Support a business that supports its own community! I know what you’re thinking. “The prices are just so much better at Walmart.” Not every corporation offers cheaper prices than small businesses. Very few corporations offer anywhere near the quality of a small business. Absolutely no corporation offers the care, personalization, and pride you get from supporting a young entrepreneur's dream. There are a million reasons not to go to a big box store, but there are about four million more reasons to shop small, shop local, and shop consciously.

For more articles like this or to hear about what we do, feel free to subscribe to the blog or check out our streetwear at Kerassi.com! If you’ve started a business over the pandemic or have found one that you love, please leave it in the comments, we’d love to hear about it