It Won't Happen Here (Until It Does): Disaster Planning for Independent Retailers
40% of retailers impacted by a natural disaster never reopen.
From floods and wildfires to tornadoes, winter storms, and infrastructure failures, every region faces some level of risk. The question is whether your business is prepared for it.
Dane Cohen joins with Patrick Keiser, Executive Director of Heart on Main Street, for an honest conversation about what independent specialty retailers can actually do (before, during, and after) to protect their staff, their stores, and their futures.
In this session, our experts unpack:
A clear picture of what your insurance likely doesn't cover (and what to ask your agent)
The short list of things to document before you ever need them
A simple business continuity framework you can build in an afternoon
What the first 72 hours after a major event actually look like and what to do in them
-
Disaster Relief for Independent Retailers — A Conversation with Patrick Keiser
Management One: Alright. Open up our waiting room here… Hello, everyone! Thanks again for joining us today. We've got a fun conversation here about something a little different at M1. So, here at Management One, we talk a lot with our retail clients about just focusing on the things that they can control, their numbers, their data, their constant transactions, but you can't really lose sight of the things that you can't control, whether it's a natural disaster, a busted pipe in the office, there are things that you just simply can't prepare for. Or… can you? We've invited on Patrick Keiser from Heart of Main Street to talk about that exact same topic. Before I turn it over to him and Dane, though, let me go over just a couple of housekeeping items here. Number one, this is a live Q&A, so we want to hear your questions, if you have anything during our conversation that pertains to your business. Any questions, comments, right down below, the Q&A button at the bottom is right there for you, and we're happy to turn it over to our panelists. One of the questions we get a lot is, are you recording this? And absolutely, yes, we are recording this. We will send a recording out to all of our registrants after. We totally understand if retailers need to jump off early. You guys lead busy lives, so we're gonna send a recording out to you right after. But without further ado, I will turn it over to our MC, Mr. Dane Cohen.
Dane Cohen: Alright, and we already… hi, Jennifer, Jennifer Shorter's on. She's saying that there's a little bit of an echo, so maybe, Nico, if you could mute out. Jennifer, how's this? Is this, is this better?
Patrick Keiser: No. Okay.
Dane Cohen: Okay, no, it's not better. Oh. Okay, let me try one more thing. We want to make sure we get this right.
Management One: If it helps, I'm not hearing an echo on my end.
Dane Cohen: Okay. Well, let's get started. Jennifer, I am sorry that you're hearing a little bit of an echo. Ben Smith, hey Ben, is that a real background? No, it is not. I wish this was my home office. But hey, guys, in the chat, let us know who you are, say hello. We want to keep this chat as active as possible. Questions, comments, jump in. We like to make these as interactive as possible. And as Nico said, we have a — interesting choice of words — a fun, fun podcast today, Disaster Relief, but Patrick and I are gonna make it fun and relatable and interesting. So, before we jump in, I know that Nico introduced Patrick, but I just want to say that if you've been to a trade show, if you've been to a conference in independent retail, most likely you've seen Patrick there. And I think he's one of the most congenial guys in the industry. So, you know, if you've had the pleasure of meeting him or interacting with him, his organization is called Heart of Main Street, and he brings a lot of heart to the independent retail community. So, Patrick, thanks for being here today.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, thank you so much, Dane. You're a flatterer. I appreciate the warm introduction. I'm very excited to talk with you.
Dane Cohen: Alright, great. So we're gonna get into some precautions and how retailers should think about disaster relief, and if it happens. But I want to kind of roll back first, and Patrick, we've talked before, we have a very similar story, a very similar background. So I'd love for you to just tell me, how did retail come into your life?
Patrick Keiser: Right, yeah, because we do, we've talked about this before, that we have a similar background. A family industry, a family business, that really was kind of my first introduction to more of the wholesale side. So I grew up… my family business had been in the wholesale sales representative side. So I worked in showrooms growing up, from kind of the age — early on, in my teens — was setting up showrooms, was working in them during the winter and summer shows. And I found that maybe sales kind of wasn't my thing, but I loved meeting people, I loved meeting the retailers there. This is an area where people are coming from all across the country, and meeting retailers, finding out what life is like in their towns, finding out the importance of them, the store within the town, and really kind of having a love for retail. And I didn't necessarily initially go straight in. As a second-generation part of a business, sometimes you're like, I don't know if I really want to do that. I got into education for a while, and I did kind of have this pull to come back for something that I could do more with retailers. And while I was on the wholesale side, I really got back as a training capacity, working with sales reps of how we can work with retailers, how we can help businesses grow. And so I've kind of from an early age on been around retail, and it's really inspired a passion that I have for how independent retailers work, how you put yourself out there as a solopreneur, and that you're starting something in your own town to make the town better and provide opportunities. So kind of my adjacency into working with retail, of how it started.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and so what's interesting and kind of comparable about our backgrounds is I was in the wholesale world for a good amount of time. I was a sales rep and the sales director, and then I went to work for my family business, was a third-generation retail business on the retail side. So it's always interesting to me, because from a wholesaler perspective, you get this very interesting kind of peek into retail. You're in, you're involved, but there's this kind of — you have an agenda, right? There's an agenda when you're on the wholesale side, you need to sell goods. You need to get them into those doors. And so what I love about what you just said is, you kind of sound like you took the time to really understand the needs of what retailers were going through, what they were feeling, and how you could really help support their business.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, absolutely, and that was kind of more my angle, too, or my skill set in that. That I wanted to learn more about the retailer, and one of the things I kind of learned along the way, and it helped start Heart of Main Street, was — eventually along the way, started asking, what were you doing before you were a retailer? And very surprised by the amount of people that hadn't been running a business before. Or I'll ask, have you always been in retail? And you get the kind of, like, ha, no, I have not been. I've only been doing this for a couple years. And it's, wow, there's so many vast skill sets, and where people are coming from, and not a lot have owning a business background.
Dane Cohen: Well, right, and by the way, I'm on calls with retailers day in and day out, and there's almost like a — when I speak to a retailer, there's almost like a little bit of this embarrassment or shame that they bring to the conversation, like, I got into this, I don't know much about retail. And I always try to tell them, no one did, right? There's very few people who open a retail business that went to college for retail store opening 101, right?
Patrick Keiser: Or have been working in a retail store since they were young, and understand it completely before they open their own. No.
Dane Cohen: Right. Most retail owner-operators are really coming from the perspective of, I had a passion, I had an entrepreneurial spirit, I had this kind of bug in me that I knew that I needed to kind of get into this space. And you see wildly successful businesses come of that, so I don't think anyone should ever feel like…
Patrick Keiser: Nope.
Dane Cohen: Exactly. But on the flip side of that, being a first-time business owner, there's a lot of things that maybe you're not foreseeing.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, absolutely. You get into it because of the passion, and then there's the whole, like, running a business part that is a different animal than what you thought you were signing up for.
Dane Cohen: Right, and one of those things that's hard to foresee is natural disasters, right? What could happen? And so we'll definitely get into that, and I want to kind of go through some of the actual tips and takeaways that retailers can engage with. But first, now tell us, give us a little bit of your background. How does Heart of Main Street come in?
Patrick Keiser: Yeah. So I mentioned, sales probably wasn't my forte, but I did have a passion of working for retailers and wanted to do something. We have a great national team that I was working with. How can we help? Is there something… I have an education background — how can we help, maybe, provide more education? And so it kind of started down this alley of it being more of an education-based and helping businesses grow, and you're really kind of addressing it from that capacity, and wanted to start something, kind of have something of my own, within a business to call my own. Found that kind of there's some appeal for that, especially kind of a national… we did form a separate business as part of Main Street, as a nonprofit, and tried to kind of gain support for this education and helping businesses evolve, and kind of quickly found that there's some support for it, but it wasn't gonna take off. And I talked to a business consultant that I had, and he told me, like, you have a lot of great ingredients, but I don't know if you know what the meal is yet. It kind of pissed me off, I'm not gonna lie. Him saying that, I was like, what are you talking about? This is a great idea, we're running with it, I'm gonna help. And it just kind of… it wasn't growing the way I was thinking, and yeah, it did upset me. I was in my head, so I thought I needed to step back and kind of say, what is a better approach here? How can we help retailers in a different capacity? And then Hurricane Ian hit, and it devastated the Gulf Coast of Florida. It's one of the most devastating financially hurricanes that has hit the United States. And I, in my capacity of working with the wholesale company, made calls on our reps — how are you doing in the area? How are your customers? And they're like, well, it's devastated. It's gonna take two years to come back from this. And just, again, learning more is — what resources are out there for these retailers? How can they come back? How can a company help? And they kind of laughed. There's not a whole lot. There's not a whole lot of resources. It's very much being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. There's different things with insurance. It was kind of one of these light bulb moments of, how can we help retailers the most? And this area that they're being completely underserved — natural disasters, and helping them rebuild their businesses, getting back on their feet, reopening their stores, and being part of their community again is incredibly… it seems like a niche thing, but it's very powerful to help a community, to help the retail stores get back open. So yeah. Made a fit.
Dane Cohen: And I gotta tell you, it's not that niche, right? We have clients all across North America. And we see it happen in all shapes and forms, right? We see businesses closed due to flooding, due to hurricanes, obviously, that's a big one. Fires, right? This is a — you know, knock on wood, we hope — ice storms, Jennifer.
Patrick Keiser: It is, absolutely.
Dane Cohen: We hope it never happens to you, but the reality is, it does, and it has pretty significant impact. I just want…
Dane Cohen: Go ahead.
Patrick Keiser: There's one, like, that's something I think I've learned, that it seems incredibly, like, oh, it's not gonna… it's only happening in these certain areas, but the more you kind of look into, like, no, natural disasters in one form or another, they happen all parts of the country at all times. They might not all make the news, but there are people that are affected by that.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and so I just wanna jump in with the community. Jennifer is a real retail superstar. And she grew up in retail, she spent 40-plus years in the business, so she's the exception. And that's why she has such an incredible retail business. And Gina, hi Gina, good to see you. Gina's been in retail since she was 16. So there is, you know…
Patrick Keiser: Absolutely, yeah, there's…
Dane Cohen: There's a lot of…
Patrick Keiser: Yeah. The more you talk, it's… I was a veterinarian before, I was an admin at a university, but I had that passion, yeah.
Dane Cohen: Yeah. Okay, so now, why don't you tell us — I would love to hear, again, I've been seeing you at events and trade shows, and I know your passion for this, and let's talk about the direct impact. Like, Hurricane Ian, that's a — that was a massive event, seems like that was kind of the light bulb moment and the shift. So over the time that you've had Heart of Main, what does it actually look like? How have you been jumping in with retailers and helping communities?
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, so since 2023, I've been raising money, working with really kind of all wide varieties, whether it's grants, whether it's other wholesale companies that are donating, other retailers helping out retailers, which is a really cool thing to have a community that wants to do that. And so we do a couple different things. We provide financial grants for the retail community, and to help them rebuild their stores, or fix different things throughout their store. Maybe their HVAC went out, help rebuild and kind of get them back into a reopening state. We also can work with a lot of wholesale companies to provide product for their stores, which is a really fun thing that's developed out of this, that the store's getting back, ready to reopen, but they did lose $100,000 worth of product. And that is — insurance might cover, and we can get into all different things with insurance later, but they may or may not cover that, depending on what you have and what happened. But that's a huge chunk of money after you're already rebuilding to try and reinvest back into your store to just get it back up to normal again. So working with companies to provide free product to them.
Dane Cohen: Oh, wow.
Patrick Keiser: To coupon codes, where they can go to the website, they can work with their sales rep, and they buy it at wholesale, and you turn around, and you're able to sell that for a full profit, which is amazing. We call it our Jump Start program. It jumpstarts the business back into life again.
Dane Cohen: What a great — like, that is such a great angle on that, something that I wouldn't… obviously we know that product gets damaged, but what a great thing for vendors to participate. That is such a cool perspective. And I know my family has had a business in retail since 1948. And so there have been a lot of moments where we've had situations where you just lose product, right? And you're just out that money, or what you would have got back, and the investment you make. So, what a great — so you actually are actively out there getting the vendor community.
Patrick Keiser: So yeah, we have a group of, I don't know how many vendors it is now, but we kind of put out a list to — and obviously their products need to work with that store — but we have a list out there and say, hey, what would you want to bring in? We reach out to those vendors and say, hey, would you be able to provide a Jumpstart coupon for this retailer? And being able to get $50,000 worth of product back into their store, that's a huge boon to just be able to get going again. And what's really cool out of that is that we've had actually other retailers that have wanted to do this too. So we call it a different pro, giving inventory. They say, hey, I have some product, it's good product, but I have some extra, and they could use it, so can I.
Dane Cohen: Okay, so for all my over-inventoried Management One clients out there, this is a good — God forbid, right? We don't… we're not advocating, but if it ever comes, we'll give you a good way to offload.
Patrick Keiser: That was one thing that we hadn't even thought of. Coming from a wholesale background, how can the wholesale community help this retailer? But other retailers saying, like, no, I have stuff, I can give them, and it's not, like, my bad stuff that hasn't sold for 7 months. Right. It's like, no, I brought this in, and I probably have some extra, and I'm doing well myself, and you need it. So it's a really cool thing that's developed out of that. And then lastly, another project that we've taken on is really doing more boots on the ground. We bring volunteers to retail stores, and we're not contractors, so we're not going to be laying your plumbing or electricity, but we come in and can paint your walls, can patch things, landscape outside, get you ready for that reopen, or set up your displays and merchandise for you. And so that, like, hey, take that off your plate, and tomorrow can be your grand opening, and really kind of help you get across the finish line.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and you know what, retail, independent retail, there's so much community in it. I think people take for granted how big of an impact a retail business can make in a community. We have Jennifer Shorter on from Grandpa Shorter's, and Jennifer, just put it in the chat, when did the business first open?
Dane Cohen: Alright, we'll wait for her to write in, but 1946…
Patrick Keiser: 26 years.
Dane Cohen: That's a tremendous impact for a store to make in a community, right? And so now it's kind of like you're bringing the kind of more global independent retail community together. So, we did have a question from Gina, a very specific question, so I'll let you take this one, Patrick. Someone this weekend lost control of their car and went right through a store window. The store will be closed for over a month. Would that be something…
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, unfortunately, from the way that we're set up, and just from — it is natural disasters, federally declared natural disasters, where the store has been affected. Just kind of the legal things within it. So yeah, a car driving through, we cannot give money for that. Even the city's water main broke and it flooded my store, we cannot — there's just, that's not a natural disaster. Now, what we're going to talk about later, kind of some of the preparation things that you could do, well, probably not the car, but the water main breaking, there's things that you can do, kind of very similar comparison. But yeah, from a grant standpoint, we're handstrung from that, so…
Dane Cohen: And before we get in, I know we have some slides we want to put up to kind of get a little informative. I think you're going to get a lot of interest after this about retailers that want to participate and want to get involved. We kind of see that Jumpstart program with the wholesalers. You mentioned some inventory trade that's possible. How else could a retailer get involved with Heart of Main?
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, so I mean, if there's something in your community and you want to — if we're doing a rebuild project in your community, certainly that'd be, or somewhere nearby, if you'd want to be involved in that. You can always reach out to us through heartonmainstreet.org, be able to — we can connect you with different resources or opportunities that we have that you could be involved.
Dane Cohen: Okay, great. So Nico, if you could put that Heart of Main Street information back up in the chat, and Patrick, if you don't mind, if you could share your screen, I'd love to go through some of the kind of steps that a retailer can take to really start shoring up and getting their head around, what if?
Patrick Keiser: Can't answer.
Dane Cohen: Alright, so Jennifer, thanks for being so active in the chat. We got Jennifer and Gina, really running it today. Okay, so thank you for putting this together. We know about Heart of Main Street. Thank you for giving us that awesome overview. Okay, so now let's talk about — we want to know the risks and create plans. Protect people.
Patrick Keiser: So I think, kind of, yeah, easier just from here of, like, there's a before, during, after. Probably more before, in that preparation. I think in this, it's important to talk about, you know, being affected by a natural disaster can mean a whole lot of things. I think our mind naturally goes to, like, complete loss of store, but it also could be, like, 3 inches of water came in, and every — all your product is fine, and everything's fine, except maybe the baseboards are completely ruined, and that's still gonna be an expense to get that back. You should still maybe prepare for something like that. So there's a wide variety of different things that being affected by a natural disaster could mean. So I think maybe probably more talking about what you as a retail owner should be prepared for, and what you, even if you don't want to spend a dime, what you could still do to help just in the off chance.
Dane Cohen: Alright, so let's go to that category, the — what should retailers be prepared for? Let's go to that next slide, because this is, like Jennifer said, right? Ice storms, right? She's in Michigan, so ice storms are going to be an issue there. Maybe hurricanes are not the thing that she's worried about. Or if you're in California, obviously we know huge potential for wildfires, or if you're in Florida, hurricanes. But what outside those main big things, what's like the next layer down to think about?
Patrick Keiser: You know, I think a great resource for everyone is ready.gov, that can tell you your specific location, what are the biggest things that you probably should be looking out for. And I've — well, I've worked with a lot of retailers that have been affected. I'm not necessarily an expert myself, I know kind of a lot about, and have interviewed and talked and worked with — so there's a lot of different things out there. It can be location-specific, geographically specific, but there is something that can affect really all parts of the country. There was kind of this early on this common theme that I was talking with, or probably like 4 of the first 10 retailers that we worked with had this mindset of, like, we never thought it would happen here. Like, very specifically said that. We never thought a tornado could hit our town, because — and there's always kind of, like, this weird, like, folklore around, like, oh, there's a river that runs through that prevents it, or there's hills. And yeah, that maybe was the truth for a really long time, but ultimately, wind doesn't care, or water doesn't care that there's wind or that there's hills. Just because it's unprecedented doesn't mean it is impossible. And so, knowing the risk, whatever it is, and kind of having in your mind, like, hey, just — it could happen, is a really great place to start and think about, alright, what else is out there that I maybe should be looking at?
Dane Cohen: Alright, so that's great. So that Ready.gov, that's a great resource, and something that anyone could just start to get a sense of what really the potential impacts are, and precautions. Now let's talk about insurance, because I think this is somewhere where — and this kind of goes to that new business owner — insurance policies are tricky, right? Because you could have a store insurance policy, or insurance on the store, and it doesn't include flood insurance.
Patrick Keiser: Yes, yes, in fact, many commonly do not include flood insurance. Depending on your area, flood insurance is prohibitively expensive. So I totally understand a retailer owner saying, like, I don't want to have flood insurance because it's going to be a huge expense and take away from profit. I get that. But one thing that I think a lot of — maybe there's misconception around hurricane damage. If you're in a hurricane area, the damage there is typically flood damage, from an insurance perspective, considered flood damage. So in the Southeast, or Florida especially, where it's really expensive to have — if you don't have it, and something happens, you're out. And insurance is gonna say, this is all flood damage, you don't have flood damage insurance, we don't owe you anything. And several of the retailers we work with are in that exact situation, where they're looking at, like, I'm completely lost. I've lost multiple stores, and there's nothing there that can help me out, which is heartbreaking. I mean, if you can picture yourself in that, that you've — everything that you've built and worked for is just gone, and insurance is saying, sorry, but… So again, I struggle to advocate, like, you have to have it, but also, like, it's important to have. I think I did have a slide here on insurance, we could kind of skip to that. Another one that I think is misunderstood is business interruption insurance.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, that's a big.
Patrick Keiser: If you have an online presence and you're still selling online, your business is not interrupted. So if you have a business interruption clause, you have to close down the website, too. Even if you have the ability, some inventory to sell, if you want that business interruption insurance because something happened to your brick-and-mortar store. And that could impede your ability to collect on the business interruption insurance.
Dane Cohen: Very interesting.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, right, and those are big ones that a lot of businesses would rely on.
Dane Cohen: Right, and again, these are the things that you just don't think about. I think that flood insurance is a very common thing. I know a lot of businesses that have faced it, that they have disaster relief insurance, and then the store floods, and they go, okay, where's my, you know, let's start to work.
Patrick Keiser: It was caused by wind and rain, what do you mean? Oh, no, like, the wind and rain caused a flood, and it came through, and they say flood insurance, and… yeah.
Dane Cohen: Right, and so for a business interruption, you may have a retailer that's doing millions of dollars on their e-commerce, so it makes sense to push the inventory through there, but if you have a very small e-commerce presence and you don't shut that down, you're not gonna get that business interruption. So that's a very interesting — and again, I think this just speaks to, it's very hard in your day-to-day as a retail business store owner to kind of think through these things, or the last thing you want to do is take time out of your day and start thinking about what-if scenarios, but…
Patrick Keiser: Right.
Dane Cohen: You know, like you said, it's until it happens to you.
Patrick Keiser: Exactly, and again, have this, like, it's not gonna happen to me, there's a 0.1% chance, but yeah, I don't know, you don't want to be held — you know, have that cash in, and you'd be left in the want, so…
Dane Cohen: Well, and I just want to scroll back. Jennifer said, to the car driving through a window, Jennifer said, that happened here last week to a bike store, and it happened to my grandparents in the late 1950s. So in the same town, two cars crashing through, right? Like, it happens, this stuff happens.
Patrick Keiser: That's what happens, yeah.
Dane Cohen: Obviously, that's not a natural disaster, but…
Patrick Keiser: I mean, I'm sure insurance covers that. Part of that probably goes also into, are you an owner, are you a tenant? Having insurance, if you are not the building owner, then you're somewhat reliant on the building owner's insurance for something like that, like a car crashing through. You might have business insurance that if there's any inventory that's damaged, but it might take a little bit longer, and it's kind of out of your hands, too, how fast that proceeds if you're depending on the owner's insurance. So always really good to understand where their gaps are, too, and be able to help maybe cover that in, from what they're not covered by.
Dane Cohen: And do you think that that's, like, a conversation — obviously we get into a space, you're heavily involved in your tenant, maybe you're not so much as the years go on, or if you have a lease, and it's kind of… is that a conversation that you should be actively speaking to with your landlord?
Patrick Keiser: If you're the owner and talking to the tenant.
Dane Cohen: No, I was — I said it, sorry, gotcha, yeah, if you're the tenant.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, I feel like you probably should know, just, again, in that understanding what could happen, you should have in the back of your mind, alright, they are covered by this, and they're not covered by this. If this happens, then where do you go, and who can they contact? It's this weird, because it happens to your business, but outwardly, it's their store, or their building. So you kind of are a little bit at their…
Dane Cohen: Mercy.
Patrick Keiser: Their whims, yeah.
Dane Cohen: And now, I genuinely don't know this, so maybe you have a perspective, but what happens if, like, you're in a mall, right? Are you protected by the larger structure, if there's a hurricane, right, and the mall has flooding, or the windows breaking, or whatever happens, right? How does that correlate?
Patrick Keiser: So I haven't worked with anyone that's been in a mall, I've worked with someone…
Dane Cohen: Or shopping center.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, like a little strip mall, and so with that, it was the building owner's insurance for things like the roof and anything outside. And then, really, there was all a different — until they could reopen, there was different rules about that. I think it was they had to be over 50% of the spaces had to be ready before any of them could reopen. So her store, she was further out, and so she was much more ready, but they had to wait. They had to wait for another several months until they got 50% that were up to capacity for her to be able to open her store again. So those types of things that you might not think about, and you might build in, that — I'm ready, but nobody else is, and so I can't even open my store yet.
Dane Cohen: Okay, gotcha. Alright, what's on the next slide, Patrick?
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, I just — we talked to him and kind of go back.
Dane Cohen: Oh, we gotta go back.
Patrick Keiser: Sorry, sorry. Jumping around, it's a conversation. But one thing, I think, in a preparation, if we're talking about, I don't want to spend any money on this, what could you do? One is to build the continuity plan. In the outward case, you know, the 1.1% chance, what would I need to do? It doesn't cost you any money, it does to have that peace of mind that you understand — you have something in place, whether that is people taking over roles, who's going to be in charge of payroll, who's gonna be in charge of communicating to your vendors, who's gonna be in charge of maybe turning off the online sales if that interrupts with your business continuity, business interruption insurance, you know, having a plan of that. And it might just be, like, that's you, but understanding what different things you might have to do. Another big one that you can do ahead of time, again, if you're not wanting to spend any extra money on storm doors or an extra insurance policy, is to just have documentation of everything. And that is a really big one. Insurance is gonna ask for all of this information. So having photos, having receipts, your invoices, having videos that you've taken around the store, just showing that the products that you have, showing your computer systems, your security cameras. Inventory to an insurance company is different than inventory to you. Inventory is everything in your store that you own, and that might be, again, your computers, that might be…
Dane Cohen: Fixtures, or…
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, fixtures, displays, even vehicles that you own, if that is part of the business. So having documentation of that, and one thing is, it's becoming much more common, I would guess that a lot of people already are doing this, but backing it up somewhere that's not the store. If you're having everything in the store, and you lose everything in the store, then you lose all of that documentation, too. So some cloud storage system — I guess that maybe is an expense of 10, 20 bucks a month, but having something off-site that everything is stored in, so that worst case scenario, everything is gone, you still have documentation, and you still have evidence of all of that.
Dane Cohen: Right, and listen, most point-of-sale systems at this point are cloud-based, so — but, there was a time, and I'm sure there are still retailers out there that potentially even on this call, that we're dealing with local servers. And if that gets wiped out in a flood, you could lose all of that historical data. So what about something really simple, like making sure you have a fireproof, like, great safe in the store to keep any important documents, or…
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, absolutely. And again, yeah, if we're kind of talking into, if we are kind of wanting to make some expenses, a fireproof safe to make sure you're having all important documents in, hurricane doors, again, if you're in a flood potential area, having something that could prevent that. Having an area where you could lift things up to, so just having maybe a sectioned off, or an area where, yeah, I do need to lift things off the ground, where would I put it? Again, a continuity plan for that.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and then one thing I've learned the hard way is, you don't want too many, especially valuable inventory, easily damaged inventory, just sitting on a floor in a box. Yeah. Right? Take the time, get it up in a shelving system. But you have some very expensive inventory that came in, especially clothing, apparel, and it's just sitting on that floor, you're just waiting for problems to happen.
Patrick Keiser: Disaster or not, something can happen to that. You're walking with your coffee and you spill it on it, right? So…
Dane Cohen: Toilet flood overflows, and it's dripping. Let's hope not. And Jennifer mentions billboard insurance is very important.
Patrick Keiser: Okay, billboard insurance. Alright, I didn't… yeah, I'd consider that, and we haven't… I haven't, again, run into retailers that have had that as an issue, but yeah, I could see that for sure.
Dane Cohen: Another one, you know, these drivers by Jennifer — well, the county snow truck plowed, lost control and ran over the billboard. So there's all — but again, these are all considerations depending on your unique circumstances of the store, right?
Patrick Keiser: Absolutely, yeah.
Dane Cohen: Okay, we're — I know we jumped around a little bit, but was there any other slides that we want to miss?
Patrick Keiser: I think kind of in a preparation, there are things that you can do. Again, knowing is probably the biggest, knowing what you're at risk for, and kind of building it off of that. And the mindset of, it's not gonna happen here, and you might be — a lot of the time right, but having that can be a flawed mindset, and you're setting yourself up for some liability there.
Dane Cohen: Alright, and then Patrick, as we wrap up, I saw there was that slide with the — someone holding a check.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah.
Dane Cohen: We want to make sure we hit that?
Patrick Keiser: Oh, this is just — if we're talking the during event, but we'll send this out afterward. I know we're kind of getting to Q&A time, but there's things in here that you can look over of, if you are in the middle of it, what should you be doing? And then afterward, kind of setting some expectations for yourself of what does it look like afterward, that it might be multiple years until your store is reopened. We're talking in the catastrophe instance, and it's okay to say, I don't, you know, that's a lot of work, and I don't know if I want to do it. It happens to a lot, a lot of retailers. 40% is a national statistic that they're affected by a natural disaster and they never reopen. And it's — you all know running a retail business is a lot of work, and losing it completely is gut-wrenching, and it's really, really difficult. And so it's okay to say, you know what, that's a nice end to it, or not a nice, but it's an end to it, and I can move on and maybe do something else after that. That happens too, and that's okay to have that mindset.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and here's another one — make sure you have a really good kind of contact method for all your employees. And I don't mean just having their phone number, but I've seen a lot of stores have private Facebook groups where all their employees are in, where they post the schedule, and a way that you can blast out messaging, because "protect people first" was one of those mantras on there. You don't want to have to be dealing with texting everyone, and you should have ways set up. So Jennifer's saying contact method for employees and emergency contact for each employee, super important, but also a central hub of communication, where if you have to blast something out — and this could be anything, right? This could be — you know, the roads are closed due to a snowstorm, maybe that's not impacting the future of your business, but that day, you need to get communication out to everyone. Who's coming? Where are you at? So some stores are obviously smaller, maybe you only have an employee or two, but, large local businesses that have many employees, you need to have ways to really get that word out, and get it out quickly.
Patrick Keiser: And, it's nice to assume that everyone, if there's a storm, that everyone sees it, but people might not, and you sending out something and saying, hey, we're closed, do not come in, having some communication method to keep any potential travesty away.
Dane Cohen: Well, great. Alright, well, let's take some questions. We want to see — I know we've had an active chat.
Patrick Keiser: Thank you.
Dane Cohen: Yes, yes, we appreciate the participation, so let's see if there are any questions that come in, but in the meantime, Patrick, what's next on your schedule? What's coming up for you?
Patrick Keiser: Man, we got a lot coming up. We will be — Heart of Main Street, we will be in Atlanta for the Gift and Home Trade Show, beginning of June, and then we'll be at the Retail Success Summit. I will see you there.
Dane Cohen: See you there. Jennifer, are we seeing you at the Retail Success Summit? She's a — she's a big — oh, you betcha.
Patrick Keiser: Oh, you bet! Alright, good. And then Dallas there for the gift and home trade show there as well. August, we'll have Boutique Summit, so I'll also have a presence there. Will anyone be at Boutique Summit? But in between that, we are working on fundraising so we can help out more retailers and provide them with funds that help them rebuild their business, so that's kind of a constant, ever-going. And we do — if you know of retailers, through our website, you can apply there. We look at applications once a quarter, and we're able to provide donations once a quarter, so if you know anybody that has been affected, certainly direct them to our site for the resources that we have.
Dane Cohen: Yeah, and again, Heart of Main Street, an incredible organization, and just more broadly, giving back to the community, whether it's the larger extended retail community family, whether it's getting involved in your area — I don't want to look at this as the lens of self-serving, but it's an important part for your business to be out front and showing how you're supporting the community back. Right? And that comes back to you in spades. So get involved. Nico, let's put up the link one last time to Heart of Main Street, how you could get involved, how you could learn more. And Patrick is always a friendly face to talk to if you have questions or want to get involved. So Patrick, any final thoughts? Before we depart today.
Patrick Keiser: Well, I certainly really appreciate you having me on. Loved meeting through chat some of you all, and can't wait to see you at shows, or if you see me around, certainly come introduce yourself. And then, also, I kind of hope to never have to meet you on the other side, but we are here for you if that does happen, so…
Dane Cohen: Yes, and we'll definitely keep that in mind. So, oh, a question! Oh, very interesting. Jennifer says, what should we do about protecting our client lists and other digital assets before an emergency? Well, Jennifer, I think we spoke about it a little bit, but I'll — this is where backing everything up to the cloud, or even something that I do that I've learned the hard way, right? I have a ton of different hard drives, and I keep them very labeled and very specific. So that's also a great thing — I, once a month, take my computer, back everything up to a hard drive. I have it labeled, I keep it in a safe in my place, and I back up my computers, because I've just had too many times where the computer fries, and you lose a ton of data. So in a business capacity, you can get some hard drives, cloud storage — don't skip — it's not even that expensive anymore to get terabytes upon terabytes of cloud storage. And making sure that it keeps getting backed up.
Patrick Keiser: Yeah, it's becoming easier and easier to be able to store something off-site, and I think that is kind of the bigger recommendation. Yeah, if you're gonna have in the mindset of tomorrow, you know, worst case, like, everything in here could be gone. What do I need to have somewhere else? How can I store something somewhere else so that I don't lose everything?
Dane Cohen: Yeah. Alright, great point. Alright, well, Patrick, I will see you in just a few weeks for the — yes.
Patrick Keiser: I'm.
Dane Cohen: Whizbang Retail Success Summit, we're super pumped about that. I think we're auctioning off something special.
Patrick Keiser: Yes, so there will be a silent auction there to benefit Heart of Main Street, so you all have a very, very great offering for that. And so, yeah, we're, again, raising money to help be able to turn around and give that to retailers that are in need.
Dane Cohen: What did we decide on this year? I think it's a romantic date with me at the Olive Garden.
Patrick Keiser: I know, that's what I'm bidding on, yeah.
Dane Cohen: Alright, well, Patrick, it was great to see you. Thank you for joining us today.
Patrick Keiser: Dane, thank you.
Dane Cohen: And we look forward to seeing you, obviously, in a few weeks. So thank you guys. Thank you for joining us.