Editor鈥檚 note: This is part of a series exploring how Northeast Ohio entrepreneurs and small businesses have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic and their plans for moving forward.
Maker: Hannah Manocchio, owner
Business: Snakes + Acey's, a screen-printing business in Cleveland
How has the outbreak impacted your business?
鈥淧retty much since the pandemic started, the walk-in traffic in Little Italy, where the shop is, had dwindled to near nothing. I closed down the shop actually before the shelter-in-place happened. I just felt like it didn鈥檛 feel right to be open. And there was a very ominous feeling in the neighborhood. I just started shutting the blinds and kind of pushing toward online. I鈥檝e been trying to work from home as much as possible, and whenever I am at the shop and packaging up an order I am cleaning everything meticulously. Making sure everything is wiped down. I鈥檓 not touching any of the apparel before I鈥檓 cleaning my hands and any equipment I鈥檓 using.鈥�
How will this change your business in the future?
鈥淭his is probably going to change everything for the business. I feel like I should definitely be pushing online sales more than in-store sales. I definitely want to set up kind of charity programs in sales where portions of the profits are going to different communities that need it. This situation is just going to set a fire under a lot of people of how much change needs to happen, and I think that a lot of the artwork that鈥檚 going to come out of this is going to help that change move along.鈥�
What have you been doing to stay creative?
鈥淚鈥檝e actually started rereading a lot of my favorite high school books that we were forced to read and you never wanted to. That鈥檚 been really fun to revisit. I鈥檝e been trying to do weird, very quick paintings of weird objects. Just because I haven鈥檛 picked up a paint brush in a really long time. And I think just trying to sketch a little every day, but not force myself to be creative if I鈥檓 not feeling it. I feel like, as artists, we鈥檙e put under a lot of pressure to create so much in this time, but mentally a lot of us aren鈥檛 in that mind frame, and a lot of us have this creative block right now.鈥�
