The world is changing fast, and we should all have the ability to adapt. Even before the pandemic got to Kazakhstan, we had already started to pivot our production. When the virus was taking off in China and Europe, we developed a reusable mask made from antibacterial materials. Up until March 20, we were going around to all the main drugstore chains in Almaty and offering them our product, so when the quarantine went into place, we were one of the first manufacturers that the pharmacies collaborated with. From the end of March to April, masks were the only thing we made, and we were able to produce more than 300,000 of them. For us, it was also about being civically minded - the country just didn’t have enough masks and it was important to meet the demand.
After looking at how the market was changing, we launched a new line called Family Sport. We were able to survive the quarantine without suffering major losses because people generally spend more for adult apparel, and customers were buying items that were better suited for spending time at home or going out with their families. Now, as a result of the quarantine, this product line makes up 40% of our sales. That doesn’t mean we grew overall by 40% during quarantine, because there was also a dramatic fall in sales of children's apparel, but we managed to find a new niche for ourselves that has met a growing demand.
We’d expected that the market for online shopping would develop over the next three to five years, but the pandemic brought all our sales online in just two weeks. We started actively selling our products on Instagram, of course, but we also turned to online marketplaces, and especially Kaspi.kz, which has become a major competitor for all brick-and-mortar retail locations in the country in terms of their rate of growth in sales. We started working with the Russian site Wildberries, too. The future is definitely online.
