Business leaders in Greensboro talk about how PPP loans kept their companies running during COVID-19. Jeff Foster, Patrick Eakes, Ramonda Woods, Michael Woods, Taylor Woods, and Greg Frisby describe what the money meant for keeping employees on payroll when everything shut down.
Chapters
My name is Jeff Foster. I'm the CEO and president of Core Technology Molding Corporation.
I'm Patrick Eakes and I'm the President of C.P. eakes Company.
I am Ramonda woods and I am the founder and CFO of Ashtay Products. I'm Michael Woods, I am founder and cio, that's chief Influencing officer. And I'm Taylor woods and I am the CEO of Ashtay.
Greg Frisby, CEO of Sensor Analytics, Greensboro, North Carolina. Developer of Advanced Measurement Systems. We're a technology business, very fast growing that bring new measurement technologies to well established global businesses.
We're a plastic injection molding solutions provider. We compete in the automotive, medical device, aerospace. We do some outdoor lawn equipment, consumer goods and biological pharmaceutical products. We have a continuous operation as well as a clean room operation for plastic medical devices and assemblies.
We make high end custom made to order metal goods.
Ashtay Products was created to serve the multicultural market. As you can see, it's created by an African American male and a Dominican woman to cater to what we call global texture hair. So when the COVID 19 pandemic hit, it impacted our business more so our customers. So, so several of our customers shut down for a month. The weekend crew, we had to let them go on a furlough for an entire month.
Within two weeks we had multiple clients who immediately told us, not asked, but told us that they were going to extend payment terms to us. And then our largest order of the year was placed on hold just three days before we were slated to start work.
So when Covid began to really run rampant, we were in a transition on top of an unprecedented transition.
It was awakening one day when the customers didn't want us to come, they were delaying orders and we didn't know what to do. So we naturally, preventatively took down our workforce, laid them off, furloughed them, told them we'd be back as soon as we could get something going.
On.
And we applied early in the first round of funding and had approval in what I thought was a pretty quick turnaround.
The PPP loan helped us expedite the process of bringing our weekend employees back quickly. So they were only out for a month.
The SBA and their foresight launched the PPP program and that turned the place around, allowed us to save all those jobs, bring back the people we needed, and now we're surging even stronger than before. Certainly helped stabilize this company.
The PPP loan helped us in a way where we did not have to sacrifice our personal savings. We had already made the decision that we were going to keep the staff on the PPP Coming in was a huge relief. Sam.
