While the past 15 months have certainly taken a toll on all of us, we can now look ahead to a brighter future. The power of positive thinking helped many people escape the darkness a global pandemic can evoke. It can also help us see the silver lining in what we’ve been through.

How can we adapt? How can we operate our businesses more efficiently? How do we connect with people?

Now that we’ve been through the worst of the COVID-19 public-health crisis, many of us can hit the reset button and get a fresh perspective on best business practices as we enter a new era. Our small family business not only survived but began to thrive as the pandemic progressed. How? It most definitely was not easy. Part of our success is attributed to our unique corporate structure: a service and retail business comprised of a full-service plumbing company and a decorative hardware showroom. But there is more to it than simply that. What follows is what we learned amidst our struggles as we enter a post-COVID Era.

Still a ‘People’ Business

Decorative plumbing and hardware is unique in that it remains a “people” business. Artificial Intelligence and technology may be replacing jobs in other industries, but ours still requires people. There are just too many unpredictable factors and variables that come into play when we’re dealing with a new construction or a remodel project that cannot be solved by an algorithm. As we all know, these types of projects are emotional and, as a result, each one requires a unique human connection.

What has evolved is the way that we connect with people. On The DPHA Drip podcast (Episode: The Consolidation Effect), I had an enlightening conversation with Vik Szemerei, director of strategic accounts at The House of Rohl. One of the biggest takeaways from the conversation involved talking about how the pandemic has forced us to think about how we connect with people and how we operate more efficiently due to the increased value of time.

We both agreed that it makes absolutely no sense to fly across the country to sit in the room with people for a PowerPoint presentation. Save the PowerPoint or strategic talking points for a virtual meeting. When you are meeting with someone, use that time to connect, get to know each other and communicate. So, while our industry is still largely a people business, we can effectively utilize new technology to do better business with people, not to replace people.

Rethinking Events & Showcases

There seemed to be a saturation of events and showcases before the pandemic – so much so that it almost seemed like burnout was inevitable.

Those planning the events and showcases were struggling to figure out how to remain relevant amongst their competition, while those attending were struggling with which events would be worth the investment to attend. This would often lead to disappointment from exhibitors due to low attendance and thus less engagement from attendees because of the low energy.

DPHA adapted by hosting a virtual conference in 2020 and expanding its outreach to a new sector of attendees. Through our relationship with ASID, NKBA and other relevant associations, we extended invitations to architects and designers across North America, yielding hundreds in attendance. Moving forward, DPHA is implementing new strategies to make our annual showcase more accessible by doing the following:

Offering a Hybrid Model: the showcase can be attended virtually or in-person.

Being more design centric: ASID will have their own booth at the conference this year, and several design centric breakout sessions will take place.

Educational Sessions will be available in-person or as part of the virtual event.

The pandemic has forced us to rethink the way we connect with people, which has also forced companies to rethink the way they allocate their market and related budgets.

Company Roles & Structure

Efficiency and adaptation have been common themes, so it is natural for this concept to be fluid in all aspects of business. Companies both large and small have regrouped to think of ways to be more lean, agile and receptive to growth and change.

Technology can also be utilized to improve processes in different areas of your business. For example, our service department switched to a “remote dispatch” model to avoid close contact with one another when public health was uncertain. What we realized in that adaptation was that it increased the efficiency of our technicians’ ability to complete their projects more effectively and expanded our network radius. We can hire technicians out of our service area to reach more potential customers and eliminate the detriment of a commute.

If your bookkeeper, accountant or administrator does not have to be in the office, your hiring pool can expand tremendously. Showroom design consultants could be more accessible and make a greater impact outside of the showroom. Technology and innovation have been critical catalysts for improving processes, increasing productivity and maximizing accessibility.

A New Era

We are all in a unique position to reinvent ourselves in business and as individuals. The loss of human connection will hopefully inspire us to live with more gratitude.

Technology and innovation have helped us discover our potential in business. We now have the opportunity to create a unique new synergy by using technology to make us more connected instead of creating more distance. Businesses can utilize technology to maximize efficiency while placing more emphasis on connecting with the people they do business with. Events and showcases can expand their network while keeping the family culture alive.

With all of these advancements and new insights, we can all move forward together with hope in this post-COVID Era.

J. Philip Hotarek is operations manager at Lutz Plumbing Inc. and currently serves as board secretary for the Decorative Plumbing & Hardware Association (DPHA). A former NCAA and professional ice hockey player, he spent summers working in the family business as a plumbing apprentice and has been working full time for the company for the past 10 years as a design consultant and plumbing technician. He is currently stepping into a management and ownership role for Lutz Plumbing Inc., whose decorative hardware showroom serves the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Diving letter:

• A new initiative from the San Francisco nonprofit Downtown Community Benefit District (Downtown CBD) will develop a plan of action to rethink 43 blocks of downtown neighborhoods to manage the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Downtown CBD has selected San Francisco-based urban planning firm SITELAB urban studio to develop a series of recommendations to rethink the Financial District and historic Jackson Square neighborhood, which have seen visitor and business decline in the wake of the pandemic. The two groups will gather input from the community and coordinate with the city on a number of guidelines to make the area more vibrant and engaging for residents and to adapt to a future that may not be the traditional 9-to-5. Includes pendulum pattern.
• “My vision is to promote downtown as a neighborhood for everyone so that San Francisco residents can live, work and play here,” said Robbie Silver, Executive Director of Downtown CBD. He added that the area had already developed but the pandemic “really gives a sense of urgency”.

Dive Insight:

With office workers staying at home during the pandemic, business-oriented city centers emptied. A current report from the Urban Land Institute and PwC US, based on input from nearly 1,700 real estate experts, found that downtown areas need flexibility, especially when employees continue to have partially remote schedules that don’t keep offices busy. The impact, the report says, affects not only offices, but restaurants and shops that rely on office workers as well.

Silver said the Financial District, which is the center of the new initiative, is a prime example of an urban area that has suffered from the pandemic. The area, he said, is defined by “bankers in suits who work from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., maybe have a drink after dinner and then take the transport home.” Like many business development districts, Downtown CBD began in January 2020 with goals including improving the cleanliness and safety of the district, creating and marketing an identity for the district, and “activating” its public spaces region.

Laura Crescimano, Co-Founder and Director of SITELAB, said the initiative is about “actions that can help downtown move into its next era,” looking at how urban design is “the glue that holds us together.” “. The group will organize community engagement sessions across the city to get a feel for how people see the city center and what they would like to see of what the neighborhood has to offer. The groups will then work with city officials and the mayor’s office to develop recommendations and an action plan that covers everything from public art to retail space to community programs.

“If you look at European city centers and other cities with vibrant city centers, they tend to fulfill a multifunctional, multifunctional role,” said Crescimano. “What the ‘multi’ means for us is one of the big questions we have to answer.”

Cities across the country are considering theirs Inner cities are more inviting and flexible. In Boston, biotech laboratories are moving into vacant office buildings. Cities offered Incentives for restaurants to move tables outside and to create more attractive open spaces in city centers. Open street programs have also redesigned some urban corridors with public art and performances, including in New York’s Meatpacking District.

A 2020 report from the Boston University Initiative on Cities, based on a survey of 130 mayors, found that 60% of respondents felt that downtown office buildings would be “less desirable” in the future. However, Katharine Lusk, co-director of the initiative, said the 2021 poll, due out this month, showed that mayors are now less concerned about the shift to remote work. “We suspect that the worst-case forecasts for the inner cities have not been realized in most parts of the country,” said Lusk in an email.

Downtown CBD and SITELAB said it was too early to know what changes downtown San Francisco could take on. In the short term, Silver’s group is planning its first public outdoor art event, a projection mapping of the work of local artists, which will illuminate four downtown buildings in December, which he believes will help kick-start the neighborhood’s revitalization.

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