Alignable's Small Business Pulse Poll Tracks Current Health Of Local Economies

BOSTON, March 17, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- While everyone on the planet is trying to avoid the coronavirus, there's nowhere to hide when you're a small business owner.

That's why Alignable.com, the largest referral network for small businesses with 4.5 million+ members, has created a very practical way to track the rise and fall of the coronavirus threat against small businesses: an ongoing survey among thousands of small business owners across the U.S. and Canada. We've heard from small businesspeople in hundreds of industries ranging from travel/transportation, medicine/wellness, massage therapy, and marketing, to pet care, music, photography, event planning and more.

Polling started last week and received an unparalleled response -- 52,000+ concerned businesspeople have weighed in so far. The poll asked: "What impact are you currently experiencing?" The answers small business owners could choose were: "it's not impacting my business," "it's starting to impact my business," "it's really impacting my business," "the impact is on the decline," and "the impact is over." 

"The most alarming part of this first survey was that in just four days, the percentage of small business owners negatively impacted by the coronavirus jumped from 60% to 80%," said Eric Groves, Co-Founder and CEO of Alignable. "At this point, the fear around this virus and its effect on small businesses seems to be growing every few days, which is why we decided to track the health of these entrepreneurial companies on an ongoing basis throughout the crisis and the eventual recovery."

Reviewing regional survey results, the Northeast wins the dubious distinction of struggling the most under the threat of the coronavirus. Some 72% of respondents there said they were impacted, followed closely by the West Coast (69%). Meanwhile, 66% of Canadians said they were affected. 

It's no surprise to see that the state with the highest percentage of impacted small businesses is Washington, which reflects the early virus outbreaks in the Seattle area. As many as 77% of all businesses in Washington State reported feeling the negative effects of the virus.

New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts were next in line with 74% of local small business owners citing negative impacts. New Jersey (73%) and California (71%) rounded out the top six states reporting coronavirus-related economic declines. 

"The statistics out of this poll were certainly sobering and reflected the widespread panic around the threat of this virus," said Venkat Krishnamurthy, Alignable's President and Co-Founder. "However, many of the more than 3,000 comments that followed this poll showed the kind of resilience, hope, heart, and even humor that will help small businesspeople to emerge even stronger once this very uncomfortable part of history is behind us." 

Here are just a few quotes that reflected both the struggles and some uplifting perspectives from small business owners: 

"As you can imagine, being in the travel and tourism business, we are in the crosshairs right now, and it's very difficult to keep up with the insanity that has developed from the fear of this outbreak," said David Decker of Humani Tours & Travel. "The fear is the real pandemic, and it has already infected all of us -- so much, that companies have NO CHOICE but to react, or else look irresponsible. This will pass -- in fact, past patterns show that it will be gone by the late spring, but people are preparing like they would be for nuclear war right now.  I pray that everyone can take a few minutes to think rationally, have a plan for how to behave to avoid the NORMAL flu and cold viruses that are a lot more prevalent out there, and just take care of their family.  But, if you have a vacation planned for the summertime, don't panic -- you're going to be fine.  This is not the Black Plague. Cheers, David"

And from Curtis Mattingly of 20/20 Chip Repair LLC: "All I can say is keep your chin up and try not to get into the panic mode. Get out and shop local and use local services. I don't want to see the local small businesses closing down as feared, as this will be the ultimate scar from this nasty virus on this great community!"

Stay tuned for our next poll update, so you can track the latest regarding the coronavirus threat to small businesses and how many of these entrepreneurs are trying to combat it. 

For any questions, media inquiries or interview requests, please contact Chuck Casto via email or text at chuck@alignable.com or 508-314-3284. 

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SOURCE Alignable