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New Realities

Local businesses and creative talents are coming to terms with how to continue their work and art amidst lockdowns and social distancing
by
The past few months have undoubtedly been a great challenge for everyone around the world, with millions of people suddenly finding themselves locked in their houses for weeks on end, unable to go outside for work and school, to visit relatives and friends, or even to exercise.  And while here in Macau we have definitely been more fortunate than some in other countries, and are now starting to enjoy a bit more freedom to venture outdoors, many people have had to very quickly adjust their business operations, as normally reliable supply lines shut down, customers disappear and events and shows are cancelled.  As we hope for better times ahead, there’s no guarantee that we will be able to return to normal modes of business in the near future, so that means it’s imperative that local businesses and creative talents continue to look for innovative ways to pursue their work and art.  Regardless of their future plans and strategies though, many have already been hit hard.
 
Bruno Simões & Ana Marques – smallWORLDExperience
 
“We’re a corporate events company working mostly with the MICE industry.  Our clients are 99 percent from out of Macau, so you can imagine how much business has changed for us,” says Ana Marques, general manager of smallWORLD Experience.  “If there’s no conferences or groups coming, then we have no clients.  Our industry is the first one to go down and the last one to recover.  People cancel events that are not strictly necessary and only when they feel safe again will it recover, and I believe it will still take some time.”
 
 Executive director of the company, Bruno Simões adds: “Honestly, in the beginning we thought it was going to be like SARS, and after a few months we would recover very quickly, but then six to eight weeks later we saw it was global, and now the world is realising that until there is a vaccine there will be no confidence. Our industry is going to suffer a lot because we are going to stay like this for a long time.” 
 
While not all businesses depend directly on customers from outside Macau, many are still indirectly affected when the tourist flow stops.  Local fashion designer Isabella Choi has noticed a downturn in her sales this year. 
 
“Our business doesn’t rely much on mainland tourists, but it’s more of an indirect impact because Macau relies on tourism from China, and a lot of our customers work in the gaming and tourism industry, or have their own businesses, and because their business is not going so well, it affects our sales as well.  Definitely the business has been affected because everyone is really worried about things, and the first thing they will cut back on is clothes,” she says.
 
She also had to deal with big changes to her supply side, just as she was trying to prepare her new Spring/Summer collection.
 
“Because of the virus, all of the factories and our suppliers stopped from January to March, so we actually couldn’t produce any fabric or accessories to make clothes.  And all our workers stopped throughout February.  It actually worried us a lot.
 
“It was very hard to find a good supplier because we had to do everything online and we had to get all the samples through the postal service, which was very slow.  It was like going back to how things were 20 years ago.  I’ve never produced a collection at such a slow pace!” she laughs.
 
The Blissful Carrot, a well-known organic food take-away business felt an immediate impact from the lockdown.
 
“Every stronghold that we had, anything that was always reliable for us, went away.  We rely a lot on the Cotai strip and everything disappeared in a day,” notes Alyson Lundstrom, one of the founding partners in the business. 
 
Other creative industries have been impacted too. 
 
Isabella Choi – Nega C
 
“It is challenging for artists everywhere. Since the main income source for musicians is performing, most are not able to make any money at the moment as there’s a complete absence of gigs for months,” notes Kelsey Wilhelm, one member of local music group Concrete Lotus.  “One of the most rewarding and fun things is getting up on stage and performing in front of an audience, especially your own original music, so not knowing exactly when large-scale events will be able to be held again can be demotivating,” adds Joana de Freitas, the other half of the musical duo.
 
Making the most of it
 
It may be hard to find a lot of positives in the current situation, but artists and entrepreneurs are necessarily good at making the most of bad situations.  One thing that many agree on is that they certainly have more free time to be creative!
 
“In this special time, we have started to turn our focus from output to input,” says Kevin Chio of local theatre group, Rolling Puppets. “We have been sharpening our craftsmanship by learning woodwork and sewing, and preparing for the new adventure ahead.”
 
Together with his partner in the group, Teng Teng Lam, they have used this time to make furniture for their family, and even colourful cloth masks to sell to customers.  
 
“Although this doesn’t really help with our financial situation, these things help me to think not just from a theatre point of view, but also about how my skills can meet the needs of others, which is very important in these times,” notes Teng Teng.
 
Maxim Bessmertny – Pontus Maximus Productions
 
Local filmmaker Maxim Bessmertny has been using the time to prepare for the release of his latest work, The Handover, and doesn’t really mind the extra peace and quiet.
 
“Filmmaking has different stages. As there has been less opportunity for productions, I’ve delved into writing and finishing films that I have shot. It’s a really valuable time to be writing. You need time and silence. How much more productive one can be when there’s nothing but you in a box!” he says.  “Writing scripts, sharing ideas with colleagues – a lot of this has moved completely online, which can be tough, but I try to find a way to get inspired by what has happened in previous centuries – Giovanni Bocaccio’s Decameron was written during the plague!”.
 
The extra quiet time has spurred on creativity for Isabella Choi’s fashion brand Nega C too. 
 
“I was busier before this time because I used to go to South Korea every month to import clothes for my store. It actually takes up a lot of time, so now I have more time to think about my designs and how to make them better,” she admits.  “It has also given us more time to think about how we are going to develop the business online”.
 
“We’ve been able to finish more songs,” notes Joana from Concrete Lotus. “Most recently we’ve focused again on recording vocals, which is always fun, and writing more lyrics! Stay tuned, gonna be some stuff to share soon!” 
 
“We really want to get some tracks and music videos out there. Since the major festivals have been pushed back, we will for sure be spending a lot of time in the studio, finishing songs and getting them out there. And practicing a lot so that as soon as shows do start up again, we’re ready to jump on the stage and smash it!” adds Kelsey. 
 
On the events business side, the team at smallWORLD Experience are using this time to learn new skills out of necessity. 
 
“Now with things continuing and we don’t know the future, we’re trying to work on new remote products and more online activities. I don’t think that things will go online forever, but I do think that the future of events will be a more hybrid situation, a mix of live and remote technology, so we are trying to learn more about the alternatives and teach ourselves about the technology,” explains Ana.   
 
Innovative solutions
 
Challenging times call for clever and innovative solutions, and looking for new ways to continue doing business and creating art despite being socially distant.  For events company smallWORLD Experience, it’s all about going online. 
 
“We are already working with an App from a US company called Wildgoose that allows us to conduct a lot of remote team building activities,” says Ana.  
 
The team uses this App together with the Zoom online meeting platform to host virtual teambuilding exercises.  Participants are challenged to answer quiz questions and compete against each other by creating fun videos and photos. 
 
“Zoom allows breakout rooms so people can work in teams, and they don’t know what the other teams are doing until the end. So it can still be a competition.  We try to make it fun and interactive,” explains Ana.  “When you’re closed at home, people are bored, so this gives them the chance to have fun with their colleagues and forget about the spreadsheets and the boring stuff. We try to make you feel as if you are in the same room together working as a team. Just small things, but they get you out of your routine and energize you. The goal is just to bring people together.” 
 
“We belong to a network of more than 30 teambuilding companies around the world, so this is something tested and proven. We’ve been using it for nearly three months and it’s been quite successful,” adds Bruno.  “Many companies are feeling that human connections and communication between teams is really important these days, because some colleagues haven’t seen each other for a long time.” 
 
For fashion designer Isabella Choi, going online is also the best way to purchase new material and reach out to new customers.
 
“It’s very hard to predict how the business will go, but I am going to put more focus on online sales.  Most of our customers are local, but because of the virus situation we have been developing our online business, selling to Taiwan and Hong Kong.  We sell to a shop in Hong Kong called Novelty Lane and sell directly to a website called pinkoi.com    This helps us a lot,” she says.  “And for this season, we are thinking of trying to produce a larger collection and only sell our own collection in the store, because I can’t travel to South Korea to source other items.”  
 
Rolling Puppets duo Kevin and Teng Teng are trying to re-envisage the whole concept of their performances. 
 
Teng Teng Lam & Kevin Chio – Rolling Puppets
 
“We started to think about ‘bringing the theatre into peoples’ homes’.  Do we always need to be the performers? Can we provide the channels and tools for performance-making to happen, but not necessarily be the ones who perform?” suggests Teng Teng. “So we are designing puppet related products to sell in the second half of the year, so people can bring theatre into their own homes.
 
“This idea transcends the rules for fixed time and space and host, allowing the authority of theatre to shift to the individual choices of audiences around the world.  These are very exciting thoughts to start investigating artistically.”
 
On a more practical level, they are also taking the opportunity to renovate their new Puppet Centre in Coloane Village, and planning workshops and activities for the summer holidays. 
 
For The Blissful Carrot team, the lockdown has meant a few significant changes to their daily operations. 
 
“Immediately we tried to pivot to getting the food to people’s houses. Delivery has always been an impossibility in Macau, parking is really difficult and it’s hard to find drivers,” says Alyson.  “We ran a lot of food to the quarantine hotels.  Food makes people happy, and we were running a whole meal system to those hotels.”
 
Technology also offers some solutions and The Blissful Carrot deliveries are available on the two popular food delivery platforms Aomi and Food4U.  Other strategies are more on a community level. 
 
“We’re rooted in the community, so one of the things we do is always keep a cyclical economy going to support other local businesses as well. The first thing we did was make sure we could continue to support our vendors, because we need to stay strong together. That fabric is really important. We can’t let anybody fail.”
 
Alyson Lundstrom – Blissful Carrot
 
The Blissful Carrot has always tried to support local organic farmers, and during the lockdown they restarted their Community Supported Agriculture program.
 
“We were getting fresh organic produce to people’s doors by car, so that was our immediate pivot,” says Alyson.
 
And to their surprise, a number of people who did not have to go to work, decided to use their new-found free time to try their hand at growing their own produce. 
 
“A lot of people did start growing, so we were like, ‘What are you growing? Can we use it here?’” Alyson explains.   “I have a friend who was laid off from the casinos and he started his own permaculture rooftop farm, so I gave him all the cuttings from the produce, and he’s currently growing organic potatoes and cauliflower.”  
 
Stay positive
 
Having survived the bumpy start to 2020, we are all hoping for things to improve in the summer, but there’s no guarantee we are out of the woods just yet.  Many of the changes and innovations that have been put into place in the past months may have to continue, and indeed expand, if returning to any sort of normality is not immediately possible.   So what are the survival strategies going forward?
 
“I like this question because it’s basically what I would tell myself,” says Maxim Bessmertny. “Be productive and use every single moment to make a connection, build a relationship, start something new. As Federico Fellini once said: you have to live spherically – in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm – and things will come your way.” 
 
“Keep yourself busy and try to be social,” advises Bruno Simões of smallWORLD Experience. “Humans are very social animals, so we need to communicate with other people and we’ll feel much better and keep optimistic.” 
 
His colleague Ana Marques adds: “My approach has been to try to keep even more motivated than usual, because this is unusual.  We need to work harder, and think out of the box.  Don’t just wait and see. It’s a chance to learn more and don’t stop.  There are always things you can do to improve your company, your work and yourself.”  
 
Wise words indeed, but there are definitely some days working from home when it’s difficult to motivate yourself to be productive right?
 
Kelsey Wilhelm & Joana de Freitas – Concrete Lotus
 
 
“You have to cut yourself some slack sometimes and not beat yourself up too much,” offers Joana de Freitas of Concrete Lotus.  “Progress has to be achieved but not at the expense of your mental health. Setting goals and giving yourself little successes keeps you motivated to never give up.”
 
“Diversify and be flexible,” offers Kelsey.  “Embracing the digital format has also been working very well for many people, and now is a great time for personal engagement with the audience, especially since many are still undergoing various versions of quarantine. Opening up yourselves, but also listening to your audience and actively responding as a human being is rewarding for everybody involved.” 
 
The Rolling Puppets duo have some similar advice for those in the performing arts.
 
“Listen to the society, outside the theatre. It may not be possible for audiences to gather inside a venue, but they are still everywhere in this world. We just need to reach them in new ways.  It’s also a good opportunity for us to take a pause from our routine of chasing deadlines of production-making, and take time to review our artistic journey, to rethink our goals.”
 
“It’s really hard because everyone is in a difficult time.  Sometimes we won’t feel inspired to create because our mood can affect our designs,” admits fashion designer Isabella Choi.  “Let’s all hold hands together and try to stay happy. I have other friends who also work full-time in the design business and when we get together we try not to talk about the situation, but talk about other happier things.. like puppies!” 
 
Ultimately, the new reality is not ideal, but it has given us time to reflect, plan and innovate, and also to appreciate some important things that we often overlook during the usual hustle and bustle of life in Macau.
 
“This whole situation makes you value the community and whoever comes in to support the business, and our regular customers who are giving us so much love and support and telling their friends to stop by to support the business,” notes Emily Jenna Smith, general manager of The Blissful Carrot. “That’s what’s making us more passionate and motivated to make healthier food for them. They’re our motivation and without them we wouldn’t be here.”
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