When entrepreneurs Jasper Phua and Marcus Chong, both 27, decided to follow their passion for photography and resigned from their full-time jobs. They were determined to focus on their camera rental business, Justrentlah LLP, but fear and uncertainty were lingering in their minds.
Mr Phua vividly remembered not being able to “cover rent, in the first few months” while Mr Chong remembers the first year in another way.
“We were not even taking a proper salary,” said Mr Chong, “Basically, enough to cover the bills.”
However, the COVID-19 pandemic brought back that same uncertainty they felt about their business in 2019.
In 2020, the events and travel industries were the two industries impacted by the pandemic, as event cancellations, postponements and travel bans took effect. One of the sectors that were affected by this devastation of these two industries is the creative industry. According to ILostMyGig.sg, the creative industry lost $30,519,873 in income and 8781 projects were lost.
Jared Kim, 19, a freelance photographer and videographer, highlights this phenomenon during the initial stages of COVID-19 in Singapore.
He recalled how he had “six weddings cancelled in one morning” and the drastic change that happened because of the pandemic.
“Every week or two, there would be something to shoot,” said Jared, “When COVID came, the initial stage was down to zero.”
In March, travel bans were put in place and events were suspended in an attempt to curb the spread of the virus by the Government. According to a survey done by Joschka Müller, the number of scheduled flights was down by 93.54 percent at the month of April.
This was when Justrentlah began to feel the pinch of COVID-19.
Mr Phua recalls at the start of the pandemic; there were “one to two cancellations.”
“Then it became three to five. Suddenly, like 10 to 20 cancellations,” Mr Phua continued, “It was quite worrying because we actually bought more equipment to cope with the demand because we were expanding.”
By the time Circuit Breaker came on April 7th, Justrentlah had a “90-95% drop in sales”. Mr Chong remembered how because of the pandemic, it “wiped out” the forecast that they originally had for March and April.
These two months are some of the periods where the company business experiences an increase in rentals, as that is when people are travelling overseas and attending events as the school holidays period is present.
Mr Phua recalled trying to “stem” the bleed that the business was experiencing. They introduced multiple promotions to try and help boost sales. However, it was not met with much success.
“It’s like you are putting a plaster on a huge cut,” Mr Phua continued, “Like a super huge cut, that is 10 inches wide and you put a plaster on it. It’s no use.”
However, there was a silver lining in all this. In Phase Two, they began promoting their studio more, as a way to find an alternative source of income. Their studio popularity increased more compared to what they experienced before the outbreak. To them, it was “another source of income” that “balanced” the lack of camera rentals.
In addition to the surge of studio rentals, the partners also began introducing more services to help offset the loss of revenue. The services include live stream services and product photography services.
When asked about when they would see a recovery to pre-COVID times, both were cautious in providing an exact answer; because they felt that it was more dependent on the recovery of “the events, the creative and the travel industry to recover” before they can see any revenue improvements.
“I don’t see things getting back to pre-COVID for at least the next one to two years,”, said Mr Phua, “So, I don’t think we are out of the woods yet.”