Even when the world is sinking into an economic quicksand, us humans are bound to rise. Businesses big and small are adapting to the cause in hopes to help halt the negative effects of the coronavirus’ spread across the globe.
Some business stepped up to build, donate, and even shifted their business plans to make it up to their consumers amid emerging uncertainties in the market:
Medical Services
- Biotech and development firm Moderna is still showing great progress to develop a cure for the pandemic. Gilead Sciences is at the same forefront, especially with a kickstarted drug – the latter biopharmaceutical firm originally developed the closest cure to Ebola.
- Teladoc is made for the stay-at-home era. The virtual healthcare company facilitates doctors for patients who can’t leave their homes with telecommunicated services via video chat, private messaging, or voice calls.
- Products from Clorox and Johnson&Johnson are in high demand, especially at such a dangerous time. In fact, J&J just announced its biggest news yet: its researchers had come up with a drug that could be ready for human trials by September.
Delivery Services
- Online shipping services such as Amazon are needed now, more than ever, as more countries are required to stay home. Though, you may want to watch out for its worker bias and experts’ belief that the company isn’t doing enough to protect its workers.
- As an alternative, look for Alibaba:one of its top competitors, especially in the Asian market. Its billionaire co-founder Joe Tsai donated 2.6 million masks, 170,000 goggles, and 2000 ventilators to New York, the US epicenter of the pandemic.
- Demand for canned goods tilted investors’ heads to Campbell Soup and Hormel, reasonably so. It looks like investors are pushing them to pump stocks up as the market continues to panic.
Entertainment Services
- People who are forced to stay at home are resorting to digital services for entertainment. Companies that have streaming services such as Netflix and Disney have seen their shares soar from year to date, while Roku’s portable streaming player services has been one of the most affordable way to compile them all in one box.
- But some people don’t want to passively watch all day, and can sometimes crave interactively socializing with other people. Video game companies, especially involving P2P, are seeing much higher demand than ever before, most especially Activision Blizzard, Take Two Interactive, and Electronic Arts.
- Several fitness apps around the world are turning to livestreaming for their workouts. Whatever your preferred workout may be, there’s always a digital version waiting for you to use.
Work-from-home Services
- Zoom Video Communications has seen surging demand since national governments began demanding people to work at home. As one of the most convenient video conferencing applications, it helped students, offices, and politicians alike to continue their businesses.
- Cloud services are in right now. Although it’s used by most people staying at home, those who are required to go to work there usually resort to these the most. Citrix Systems offers an effective service for this alongside Microsoft Corp, Google, and similar companies.
- Slack Technologies provides cloud-based collaboration tools and services that helps team get projects done without the need of physical communication. While the companies above have considerably changed the cloud space, Slack has been one of the easiest ways to keep track of actual progress.
Assisting Services
- Tesla and Ford are among the unlikely firms that aim to mass-produce ventilators against respiratory problems driven by COVID-19. The companies are assisting General Motors and Ventec to create at least 200,000 new ventilators by the end of this year.
- Crocs gave away 10,000 pairs of shoes to frontline health care workers in the US as their way to prop up protective equipment shortages. Apple is also donating 20 million face masks (and then some) to health care facilities in the US and across Europe.
- Hormel Foods and Uhaul have been one of the helping underdogs of college students and the less fortunate. The former is providing 30 days of free self-storage to college students in the US and Canada for those impacted by pandemic, while the latter pledged $1 million in cash and product donations to help the hungry in the US.
Smaller businesses have also converted their office buildings into rehabilitation centers and even sewing houses for those who need face masks, especially those in the Czech Republic.
Though everyone is reasonably scared and overwhelmed. Fortunately for us, these businesses have not only stepped up their game, but also did a large part in helping us cope with the pandemic. Some even did a large part in helping authorities and health care to flatten its curve – efforts we should never forget.