A Disaster Could Never Impact My Business

Right. You are on a small hill, so no flood damage. You have lightning rods on your building. You have cameras and alarm systems covering your building. You just spent $70K to have fire sprinklers installed. You have got it made. Yup. Sure. ‘Easy Street’ is the new name of your road. And, buffaloes have wings and pigs fly.

Knock knock… wake up! You have to prepare for an emergency. If you don’t, you have an unusually high chance of losing your business during an emergency.

I’m not writing about the flashlight and first-aid kit; let’s look at the big picture for a glass shop.

What happens if your tempering vendor has a fire and can’t supply your shower doors. You call three others and they tell you about a long lead time because of the competitor’s fire. You are the one who will get burned. When you call the new vendors, they want you to fill out a credit app, and pay COD for a month. You can prevent this fire fallout by giving 20 percent of your business to another vendor starting now. Then, when you call up with new orders, you go right into their production schedule. 

Your IG vendor’s line goes down and the parts will take two weeks to come in from China. Please re-read the paragraph above.

You get it. There are just two more ‘must-dos’ for your glass company. Take a back-up copy of your software home every day if your records are not kept on the cloud. If you are not in the office at the end of the day, make sure another employee performs this task. Keep your copies at home for about a week. 

The other one is to schedule an appointment with your insurance broker and make sure you have business interruption insurance along with your regular policies.

Yes, there are a hundred other things to do, but we are in the glass business.  Think of getting glass, handling the glass, getting it to your customer and getting paid. Protect these steps in your business to keep financially healthy.