Cristina Șindile, CEO of BT Mic, recently gave an interview to Ziarul Financiar about how small Romanian entrepreneurs are adapting to the new business conditions created by the pandemic, and we’ve picked out some of her remarks. Enjoy! 😊

• Most small businesses went into the pandemic with an exclusively offline presence. 2020 closed out a long cycle of prosperity and high consumption, with many businesses operating in physical stores. Sales had been rising year after year, and interest in online was low, both from entrepreneurs and from consumers.

  
  

• In the first months after the spring 2020 lockdown, BT Mic provided financing primarily for day-to-day operations — routine expenses such as salaries, taxes, suppliers, and inventory to reopen.

  
  

• For this very reason, we did not restrict our products in terms of amounts, terms or general eligibility, aiming to keep our turnaround time to just a few days. At the same time, we accelerated our collaboration with the European Investment Fund to continue the small business loan guarantee program, which in turn makes it easier for entrepreneurs to access financing.

  
  

• Once the immediate shock had passed, many businesses had to reorganize, mainly their distribution channels, so they could keep reaching customers. In such cases, financing supported the set-up of the new infrastructure needed — launching online stores or bringing customers onto certain marketplaces, and starting home delivery for products that until then were consumed in physical locations.

  
  

• Another initiative to support businesses built from scratch was called “Buy from a small business”, launched in September 2020, with the aim of being a voice for the small entrepreneur community.

  
  

For more than two years, we’ve set out to raise the profile of small businesses, to give entrepreneurs and their businesses visibility, and to make sure their stories are heard. As a result, starting today and through the end of May, we’re opening the doors of the BT Mic blog to any small business — a BT Mic client — that wants to present its business and tell the story of the past year.

The aim of the initiative is to reopen the conversation in the world of small business, to bring businesses to wider attention and to shine a light on people who found solutions to move forward, whether the support came from financing or not.

Come meet them, the small business entrepreneurs who didn’t give up and learned to adapt, find solutions and keep going, no matter what!

They are #ClientiiBTMic