Three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we are still dealing with the consequences of those months, in which we not only saw our loved ones leave, but also marked the beginning of a crisis in all aspects that took us to rethink every aspect of our lifestyle.
The economic plan was a survival exercise, mainly for those people who had a company, since more than a million micro, small and medium-sized companies they closed their doors permanently in a period of 17 months, revealed the National Institute of Statistics and Geography, in December 2020.
The survey on the Impact Generated by Covid-19 on Companies, which was carried out from September to October 2020, indicated that 7% of the companies had some affectation due to the pandemic, among the main effects were: decrease in income (79%), low demand (51%) and shortage of inputs and/or products (22%).
The companies had to reinvent their operating models and digitize them; however, the three companies agree that the key to overcoming the crisis was the support and passion that their employees showed for the company.
Collaborators, the most important thing
Roberto Ramos, founding partner and general director of Arréglalo, mentioned that the pandemic brought them difficult times that led them to rethink everything they were doing on a day-to-day basis.
“He made us face many challenges, he made us clean the house with everything we had been doing wrong and he made us truly pay attention to what is worthwhich is: paying much more attention to our franchisees, remodeling the business format, consolidating our network and we knew how to take advantage of it, we showed that we were resilient in the face of a pandemic and we moved forward,” Roberto commented.
The franchise was born in 2004 and is dedicated to adjusting and fixing clothes, it has 120 units throughout the country, where women between the ages of 18 and 60 work, representing 97% of the company’s human capital.
Despite the difficulties, the businessman pointed out that between 2020 and 2021 only two units closed and they even closed with positive numbers in the delivery and opening of new franchises. He attributed all this to the work they had as a work team and to giving value to the human part.
“For me the most important thing is human relations, business is business, weight is weight, but people are what makes the companywith us there are no employees, we have collaborators”, highlighted the businessman.
He recalled that when the pandemic began, the first thing he thought about was people. “We work and make sure that no job was lost. At corporate and in the units, we supported people who were hospitalized or who had a situation with a family member and we knew that we could disappear from the market, but we were clear that the only way to survive and get ahead was by making our team stronger”.
Be leaders and not just bosses
For the founders of the Master Franchise, the pandemic brought them very complex moments that forced them to be more creative and evolve to the digitalization of its processes.
“These last three years have changed the perspective of the business and made the vision we had of what we wanted to project mature much faster. All this taught us that we can work with some areas from homewe implemented technology at the point of sale level, at the software development level so that the control of branches today is more efficient, it helped us make the transition to a 4.0 company”, said Vladimir Ramírez, founding partner of Franquicia Máster.
The company emerged in 2012 with the idea of having a range of opportunities for investors and they have created their own brands throughout these years, such as Churrería Porfirio, Taco in or 60’s Burger.
The sense of belonging that the corporate has fostered was key to facing the pandemic and keeping the project afloat. Show yourself as a leader and not as a boss o franchise owners helped them keep their collaborators and franchisees in sync.
“Much of the vision of the project is do things from love. We believe that when there is a crisis, when there are eventualities, when there are conflicts, the only way to rescue a project is from love, because it involves union, teamwork, empathy and becomes a value chain. The commitment of being a franchising center is that we can transmit the same vision and philosophy to both our collaborators and our franchisees”, concluded Vladimir.
family is key
The health measures to contain the pandemic forced businesses to close temporarily. One of the companies that also had to lower their curtains temporarily was Chanfle and Recontrachanfle, with just a month of operation.
They were very complicated moments due to this situation; however, the support of the family was key to not losing the way, as mentioned by Valeria Pérez Ríos Gómez, director of Chanfle and Recontrachanfle.
“I was very lucky because the support of my family has been amazing And it is something very important for entrepreneurs, because yes or yes there are days when you are going to wake up and you are going to say: ‘what am I doing? Am I crazy? I don’t want to stop, I just have problems’, and they are there, listening to me and encouraging me”, recalls Valeria.
He says that the most important thing in Grupo Chespirito, a company that is in charge of managing and exploiting the image of the characters created by Roberto Gómez Bolaños, is that it has managed to transmit empathy and teamwork, “we were lucky to have a team who has been very committed from day one.”
