Covid Nearly Destroyed My Business, But I’m Still Here

When people talk about Covid’s impact on small businesses, it’s usually reduced to statistics, closures, and government supports. Percentages. Graphs. Headlines.

But behind every “small business affected” story was a person trying to hold something together while the ground shifted beneath them.

Mine was one of them.

For a long time, I wanted to write about the real impact Covid had on my business. Until I created David Condon Finds, I didn’t really have the right outlet for a post like this. My main website focuses on woodturning and products. This story is different. It’s about survival.

Before Covid – The Build Years

My business didn’t exist before July 2015. For about a year prior, I was returning to woodcraft after working in other industries for 5 years. To say I was rusty was an understatement. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed returning to my roots and often found myself still working after normal business hours ended. I did not watch the clock anymore like I did when I worked for a company. I was happy, working with my hands once again. Making things that last instead of being a contractual obligation.

What followed were years of learning, investing, experimenting, and more mistakes than I could possibly count. I wasn’t just running a business, I was building one from scratch while learning a highly skilled craft at the same time.

I was:

● Learning to turn
● Buying machines I could barely afford
● Investing in tools and equipment
● Testing drying techniques
● Figuring out how to scale production
● Developing products people actually wanted
● Marketing
● Website building and management
● Direct sales to the public

Woodturning isn’t something you master quickly. There’s a steep learning curve, a long skills phase, and a constant balancing act between creativity and commercial reality.

I’ve written before about how hard it is to run a craft business in Ireland, even in stable times, and those early years were very much part of that wider learning curve.

By the end of 2019, things were finally clicking.

Products were selling well in shops. The workflow was improving. And I had just started teaching, something I genuinely loved. I was also lined up with Airbnb Experiences, ready to welcome tourists into my workshop in 2020 and open up new direct revenue streams.

It finally felt like momentum.

Then Everything Stopped

Like every small business owner, I remember the strange disbelief of those early Covid days.

What started as an online joke about Corona beer and a virus suddenly became closures and restrictions. Two weeks to beat the spread. “Temporary” measures that quietly stretched into months.

Shops closed.
Footfall vanished.
Teaching stopped overnight.

Customer habits changed.

There was no dramatic crash, just a slow, unsettling realisation that the business model I had spent years building simply couldn’t operate in the world that suddenly existed.

The Aftermath Nobody Really Talks About

Lockdowns were brutal, but the real shock came afterwards.

When restrictions lifted, customer behaviour had shifted in ways that were subtle but profound.

People were buying differently.

Discretionary spending tightened.
Costs rose sharply.
Margins shrank.
Energy prices climbed.

Customers didn’t disappear, but they didn’t return in the same way either.

Every year since has felt less predictable and more fragile.

The Quiet Explosion of Costs

One of the biggest pressures came from something many customers understandably never see, shipping.

During Covid, courier prices increased. That made sense at the time. Disruption. Uncertainty. Logistical chaos. Shipping container shortages pushed global transport costs sharply upward.

What didn’t make sense was what happened afterwards.

Shipping prices never really came back down. I’ve spoken in more detail about the pressure couriers place on small independents, and how limited our options can be when rates rise.

Many couriers seemed quite content to keep the higher rates. Fuel costs were often cited as the reason, yet during parts of Covid fuel prices dropped dramatically when planes were grounded and roads were empty.

For small businesses, this created a painful squeeze:

• Higher delivery costs
• Customers more price sensitive
• Limited ability to absorb increases
• Constant pressure on margins

Large retailers can dilute shipping costs across massive volume.

Small independents can’t.

Every price increase becomes a decision:

Absorb it and lose margin, or pass it on and risk losing the sale.

Neither option feels great.

Adapt or Fold

At some point, stubbornness stops being a virtue.

I had a choice: cling to the old model and hope conditions magically improved, or adapt.

Diversification wasn’t expansion for the sake of growth. It was survival strategy.

I branched into:

• Craft supplies
• Woodturning tools
• Workshop consumables
• Complementary product lines

It stabilised cash flow, but it also meant loans, stock investment, and risk during an already uncertain time.

Still, it kept the doors open.

And sometimes survival is the only available win.

The Psychological Side

What I didn’t fully appreciate was the mental toll.

Watching something you’ve built slowly struggle is exhausting. Not dramatic enough to collapse, not healthy enough to feel secure.

Just… limping on.

A small business isn’t just income.

It’s identity.
Skill.
Reputation.
Years of invisible effort.

Walking away isn’t purely financial. There’s a particular kind of madness and freedom that comes with working for yourself, and that tension becomes even sharper during uncertain times.

What I have struggled with more than anything is something I can only describe as a lingering Covid malaise in my work rate. That long stretch of forced slowdown changed something.

Before 2020, I could push hard. I had momentum. I could sustain output at a level that felt natural.

Now, I sometimes reach for that same drive and it simply isn’t there.

Some might call it aging. But I know, in my heart, that it’s a remnant of that period. A subtle after-effect of months of uncertainty, restriction, and stalled progress.

And that’s something nobody really warned small business owners about.

Why I’m Still Here

Despite everything, quitting never sat comfortably with me.

Instead, I’ve focused on rebuilding smarter rather than simply pushing harder. Since Covid, I’ve had to pivot the business four or five times, adjusting to market shifts and simply pushing on through.

Most recently, I completely overhauled my workshop interior:

• Reworking machine layout
• Improving workflow
• Creating a better teaching environment
• Reducing daily friction

Not expansion, optimisation.

Alongside that, I’ve been steadily building long-term digital visibility through my blogs — slow, patient work that compounds over time. Blogging wasn’t just a marketing experiment. It changed how I think about my own business, and the discipline of writing regularly has reshaped my approach more than I expected.

None of it is instant.

But neither was building the business.

Five Years? More Like Ten (Plus a Pandemic)

I was once told it takes five years to establish a business.

That advice feels optimistic today.

With global disruptions, rising costs, changing consumer habits, and economic uncertainty, the timeline looks very different.

For me, it’s been more like ten years.

Ten years of learning.
Ten years of adapting.
Ten years of recalibrating expectations.

And a pandemic sitting squarely in the middle.

Still Here

The business looks different now.

Leaner.
More diversified.
More cautious.
More resilient.

But it’s still here.

And so am I.

Still turning.
Still teaching.
Still adjusting course when needed.

Because sometimes survival itself is a form of success — just one that rarely makes headlines.

If any of this matched your own experience as a small business owner, I’d be interested to hear about it.

Thanks for reading,
David

About the Author

I’m David Condon, a small business owner and blog writer based in Tralee, Co. Kerry. Running my own woodcraft business means I’ve seen first-hand how much confusion there can be around shipping times, delivery dates, and what “business days” actually mean. That’s why I wrote this post — to share a bit of what I’ve learned and hopefully save you some frustration.

Every so often I step outside the workshop to write about wider business topics like this one. If you’d like to know more, you can follow the link in the Note from the Author section below or visit my About Me page to learn more.

💬 Note from the Author
This post was written specially for David Condon Finds. If you enjoyed it, you might also like my other projects:

Phoenix DVD Blog – where I write about DVDs, Blu-rays, and life as a collector
David Condon Woodcraft – my main site focused on woodturning and handmade Irish pieces

If you’d like to support my writing, you can do so through the Buy Me a Coffee button below. It helps keep these side projects going — thank you!

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