Short interview with Josh Bevins (CTO) and Stephanie Bevins (CEO) of Design2Print (a graphics/event company founded in 1995). They describe COVID-19 forcing event business from near 100% to 0% within days, being effectively down for about 12 months, receiving SBA/PPP loans which allowed them to retain staff and pivot into interior design and decorative metal work. Josh also references his role with the Small Business Development Center in St. George, Utah, and notes he has been a small business owner for 15 years.
Questions this video answers
1995
Stephanie Bevins
Josh Bevins
From about 100% to 0% within approximately one to three days
About 12 months
Chapters
Design to Print is a graphics company that started in 1995. I'm Josh Bevins, CTO.
I'm Stephanie Bevins, CEO of Design2Print. Covid was a tough time for us because our business is so intertwined with people, with events. It really shut down. It was pretty non existent for a long time and you know, we luckily had prepared ourselves to not have the debt, not have the issues that other companies had and struggled with through Covid. So we were fortunate in that sense. But it hit our business really hard.
During the COVID shutdown. We're in the event industry and we went from 100% business down to 0% business in I think it was one to three days somewhere in that vicinity, we got a call from the Las Vegas Convention center saying all shows were off. As the COVID break kept going on, the quarantines, the shutdowns, it was such a wonderful gift that the SBA was able to jump in and provide some, you know, ppp. They were able to help us with a couple loans and different things that helped us because we were really completely down for 12 months as a company and without the help of the sba, we would have been in a bad place.
We pulled our team together, we were able to brainstorm and come up with different ideas of where can we grow, how can we find new business, how can we find new customers. And thankfully, with having additional funding from the sba, we were able to keep our employees employed and working, keep our team intact. We didn't want to lose our welders, we didn't want to lose our printers, we didn't want to lose our creative team. And so we were able to transition to interior design and decoration to decorative metal.
I've been a small business owner for 15 years in addition to my role as the director of the Small Business development center in St. George, Utah. I wish that I had known about all the expansive resources that are available to us as a business owner. When it hit so suddenly, everything was a knee jerk reaction and so much panic in the economy. These funds gave them time to correct the ship and be able to make decisions and management decisions and see where things were going. And so it gave them the money that they needed to run their businesses in a time of uncertainty. PPP lending significantly helped in the recovery of the economy by allowing struggling businesses to get the funds that they needed to support their businesses during this challenging time. So we were able to. I believe you were the first person to apply for PPP in the state of Utah. If I'm not mistaken. I think you were. You were there minute one. You know, Stephanie's just an unbelievable, you know, proactive person in this, but we were able to get in right on point. We were able to get the money. We were able to keep people working. We were able to pivot. All these things happened because we stayed in touch with that SBDC office, and it was great to have them here and very thankful for their input.
