Editor’s 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?
“Pretty 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’t 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’ve 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’m not touching any of the apparel before I’m cleaning my hands and any equipment I’m using.”
How will this change your business in the future?
“This 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’s going to come out of this is going to help that change move along.”
What have you been doing to stay creative?
“I’ve actually started rereading a lot of my favorite high school books that we were forced to read and you never wanted to. That’s been really fun to revisit. I’ve been trying to do weird, very quick paintings of weird objects. Just because I haven’t 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’m not feeling it. I feel like, as artists, we’re put under a lot of pressure to create so much in this time, but mentally a lot of us aren’t in that mind frame, and a lot of us have this creative block right now.”
