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Home > Top Stories > A covid journey: fighting to keep the lights on

A covid journey: fighting to keep the lights on

Published by linker 5

Posted on September 2, 2020

3 min read

Last updated: January 21, 2026

Business owners navigating challenges during Covid-19 pandemic - Global Banking & Finance Review — An illustration depicting the struggles of UK businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic, reflecting the economic uncertainty faced by many. This image relates to the article discussing the challenges and resilience of companies like Everything Branded.

By Paul Rowlett is the founder and CEO of Everything Branded.

When times are good it can be hard to believe it’ll ever stop. At the beginning of this year our corporate gifts and branding company was on track to hit record sales and achieve all of our yearly targets, but none of us had banked on Covid-19.

As Covid-19 struck and we were all forced into lockdown in March, almost overnight, we were 97% down in sales and left wondering how to scale back our business without destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of people. I called it Armageddon.

Businesses all over the UK were suffering just as we were. In an instant, Covid-19 had stolen our lives; business confidence plummeted and Britain atrophied while grasping to cope with a new world made up of a new language, new behaviour and new rules.

As we all know, the government stepped in with a number of lifelines to support business, and as a result, I believe that nearly three quarters of British employers took advantage of the furlough scheme. In my opinion, this is the thread that the labour market currently hangs on. The sad truth is that around 4,000 businesses went bust between March and April this year, while in the second quarter, economic output shrunk by 20.4% – the worst quarterly slump on record. As a result, thousands of employees don’t know if they have a job to return to when the furlough scheme finishes on October 31st. We have, it seems, arrived at a level of economic uncertainty that most of us have not experienced in our lifetimes.

If you look at the UK hospitality industry, sales slumped 87% in the second quarter which had a knock-on effect to businesses like ours that rely on the sector for sales. Suddenly, the market had evaporated and trading all but stopped, pushing companies to the edge of breaking point and some beyond. Its cruel fate littered the news.

This time last year things were very different for us at Everything Branded. We were throwing ourselves into training and outreach programmes, partnering with the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy at our local Leicester College to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, opening $1.2m offices in Las Vegas, and I even appeared on Channel 4’s TV series ‘The Secret Teacher ‘ when I went undercover into a school in Hertfordshire to identify and support underperforming students. We were full of hope.

Covid-19 has taught me that things can change in unimaginable ways, and that change cannot be planned for. The reality is that the pandemic has forced business owners to adapt to new conditions or face existential questions over what the business is really there to do; making tough choices and thinking outside of the box has been crucial to survival.

Our Covid journey has been tough, so tough that there were days when it seemed like the lights would go out on my thriving 10 year old business, so tough that I started to vlog if only to vent my frustration. History was in the making and I wanted to leave an ‘uncut’ record of the raw experience, highlight the tough choices we had to make, the sadness and the despair, and then the hope as we found our way and began to pivot out of this chaos to, I hope, live to fight another day. This is what we have learned:

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