The strange upside of COVID for media entrepreneurs
Despite the ongoing challenges facing the media industry because of COVID, founder of Honeycombers, Make It In Media and business coach Chris Edwards says now is the time to look for opportunities.
I am not going to lie, the past 18 months have been incredibly challenging in the lifestyle media landscape. As a bit of backstory – I am based in Australia, and own lifestyle media companies Honeycombers and HoneyKids and which operate in Singapore, Hong Kong and Bali (Indonesia).
My businesses rely heavily on arts, entertainment, hotels, restaurants and events – basically every industry that involves large numbers of people gathering together. When our advertising bookings plummeted by 77% in March 2020, I had that sinking feeling like I was on a turbulent flight. I had no idea what was ahead (did anyone?), but a wild ride is a pretty fair description.
The toughest months have to have been March through to June last year when I had no idea what support we were going to get from the Singapore government. My team reduced their hours for two months and I had to make redundancies in my events team. This was incredibly difficult, (and that is a huge understatement).
