“At Zakkia, when the pandemic first happened, I went into a bit of an emergency mode. I had one girl who was working for me at the time and as the pandemic panned out, I didn’t know if I could run the business and run her needs as well, so I eventually had to let go of her.
It can be lonely as a sole business owner. As it turned out, our business did well, everyone was in lockdown and people turned to homewares. In hindsight, it really gave me the opportunity to be hands on in the business then and see all these little gaps. I shifted a lot of things to automation, which helped me focus on other areas.”