Have you enjoyed the half a million or more thoughts you have had in the last seven days since my past Tuesday Tips? I have been very inspired to manage my thoughts, to banish the negative and superfluous, and to focus on the positive. Great timing! Over the past week, there has been a shift in thinking to ‘how will we come out of this?’ Today, I’d like to share some thoughts around managing this process. Many of my thoughts are actually questions, some I have absolutely no answer for… yet.
At the time of writing, we know that on Thursday the Government will be telling us what decisions they have made around Phase 2 of their coronavirus strategy. It has also been announced that the Prime Minister will speak to the nation next Sunday unveiling a roadmap setting out his intentions for unlocking various parts of the UK economy.
We also know that we have no idea what this might actually look like. So, this essay is not about when we should go back to aesthetic practice, nor when the pubs will reopen, it is more about what we might consider as we start to plan a phased return.
My biggest challenge to both myself and the team here at AestheticSource is to decide what ‘return’ may look like. Do we want to go back to the way things were, or is there a better way to support our customers, to help them meet the needs of the end-users of our brands and products? What might we do as a company and as individuals to work smarter and in a more environmentally conscious way? How can we support each other to handle the psychological effects of a changing work environment, to reduce the natural fear of returning to areas of possible exposure such as public transport, sales calls, training events and even in the longer term, conferences and international travel? What can AestheticSource do to help our customers navigate the route back to being fully open and fully trading – which will necessarily be very different in the short term, and most likely in the long term too?
Our plan involves all the necessary safety measures, which are discussed widely elsewhere, so what else are we looking at? The areas we are focussing on most is support the step-wise return to business, helping right now with online consultation tools and skills, drop-shipping for clinics, providing excellent training webinars and support. Then as clinics start to be able to reopen and distancing remains critical – we will continue with dropshipping and start to design other support for you such as online ‘lunch-and-learn’ or evening ‘peek and peel’ home treatment training sessions that you can do either on social media or invited gatherings on Zoom or Skype or Teams or one of the many similar platforms. We encourage you to consider skincare retailing as a key way to stay involved with your patients’ journeys not just through this, but for the long term.
To inspire you, I had an excited call recently with one of our team telling me of a clinic customer who did a blog about one of our ranges over the weekend, and by Monday morning had received orders valued at several thousand pounds total.
We will be doing everything we can to help kick-start all of our businesses, from home, maybe from our offices, and to you in your homes and clinics. We will also continue to involve ourselves in the various Care Packs and similar initiatives we are doing for NHS workers with PPE affected skin, using the sensitive skin products from our ranges. The ‘thank yous’ that have come in as a result of the giving we have done have been a major boost to us here at AestheticSource head office (or rather, my desk in my office off the kitchen at home…), and we’d love to hear of any projects you have been involved with locally.
Thank you for reading this, I hope you are able to enjoy VE Day this Friday, remember to lock up your desk and have a Bank Holiday…! David and I will be in our front garden, sharing a street party with our neighbours with 1940’s glamour and bunting, and knowing David a glass or two to raise a toast to our British spirit.
Cheers, and Good Health, Lorna X
