Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March of last year, the economic upheaval it wrought was devastating nationwide with businesses everywhere seeing their revenues plummet as states and cities issued stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the virus.
For Utah entrepreneur Linda Lindeman, owner of NAAG Tag, a West Jordan-based name tag and engraving company, the impact of the shutdown was immediate as revenues fell precipitously in the early days of the pandemic.
"We actually dropped 90% in the first few months, now we're up to about 50%," she said. "We've come back a long way but we're still struggling to pay everything and do everything."
Before the outbreak, the business had grown annually for the past quarter-century, she said.
"We have never dropped any year," Lindeman said. "We've grown every year for 25 or 26 years until this year."
Facing potential disaster, she credits a local business advocacy organization for helping to keep her enterprise afloat during those initial tough times. Chamber West is a nonprofit membership association working to support the interests of more than 300 businesses in Kearns, Taylorsville, West Jordan and West Valley City.
While such organizations are prevalent throughout the Salt Lake Valley, Lindeman said this particular group is among the best she has ever come across.
"They have saved our heinie," she said. "They offered a deal where they paid for my advertising for two months (at the start of the pandemic). They offered a huge help to us."
She said the association kept her company apprised of the federal funding that was made available when the first aid package was approved by Congress last spring.
"They have been a chamber like no other," she said. "Anytime I have anything anywhere when it comes to this stuff, I can go to my chamber and they know the answers."
She said her company was able to keep eight of its 12 employees in the wake of the downturn, but it could have been much worse. Despite some continued financial struggles due to lost business, she is hopeful her company will survive the turmoil of the pandemic.
"I attribute most of our slowdown to (the shutdown), but as the businesses have started coming back on and opening up again, then we're gradually building back up," Lindeman said. "I don't know how many of those businesses went under or whether it'll take another five to 10 years before we'll be up to where we were."
Communication is the most critical tool the association employed, explained Chamber West President and CEO Barbara Riddle, ensuring member businesses were getting information as quickly as possible.
"They were worried about saving their business," she said. "They didn't have time to go out and research. What we were able to do was all that research."
She said the chamber represents "a strong voice" for west-side businesses.
"We're really proud of that ability and what we've been able to accomplish and what we continue to accomplish," Riddle said.
JoEllen Kunz, owner of Great Harvest Bread Co. in Taylorsville, said a strong association that supports local small businesses is an invaluable resource to have.
"In the very beginning (of the pandemic), when things were shutting down, we were really trying to just figure out what that means," she said. "We went from 10 to 15 caterings a week to zero. There was nobody doing any catering anywhere."
She said her revenues dropped 10% initially, but her business was able to bounce back in part because of a "shop local" campaign developed by Chamber West.
"We've benefited immensely from it," Kinz said. "It sure was great for us and allowed us to remind customers in Taylorsville that hadn't been in that we're still here, and that it can make a difference by shopping local."
"I belong to several different (business) groups and they all did what they could, but Chamber West just stepped up more than the others and really reached out to me," she said. "As a small business owner that was my experience. They really just went out of their way to help promote and get us the information that we needed so that we could make it work."
Steve Pluim, president of TalentTeam, a staffing and recruiting firm located in West Valley City, was also among many small firms that struggled early on during the economic shutdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak. His company "instantly lost 40% of our business," he said.
With the help of the federal Paycheck Protection Program and guidance from Chamber West, his firm has recovered.
"We brought our business back to where it was prior to COVID becoming an issue in late March of last year," he said.
The key to organizations like the chamber being successful is "to have people who are willing to serve like Barbara (Riddle) and her team" and for members to be equally as supportive of the chamber's efforts to sustain itself as a nonprofit entity.
"You have to be able to provide them with organizational legal structures, organization that they can rely on because they're a small business too in a lot of ways," Pluim said. "From the chamber's point of view, we have to gather up money and pay our bills and meet our salary obligations and pay the rent and all that. So they have to have the same business-friendly environment to survive that the rest of us do."
