The industries birthed in and post-Covid 19 and how they are faring six years after

The covid 109 pandemic, which hit the world in the year 2,020 caused a shutdown of the world for more than 7 months. Beginning on March 20th of that year, much of the world of business did not open until October of that year.

The disease was credited with unprecedentedly high infectiousness that made physical interactions of any kind big risks. The disease could be transmitted from one person to another from the exchange of fluids, by air, sweat glands and by a few other means. Offices and workplaces became high-risk zones for possible infections.

Transport became an impossible thing to do. People stopped travelling interstate, and those who must move around were compelled to wear protective masks over their noses and mouths.

Face masks, items that were usually stocked and sold by artisans to people who worked on industrial sites, suddenly became essential items for everybody. Even the face masks evolved. From the ones that covered the noses and the mouths, creative people found ways to create ones that relieved people of the discomforts associated with speaking while covering the mouths and noses – the ones made from plastics and worn on the forehead with a transparent screen descending to the neck.

That one looked good, except that it made people look like some welders working with electrodes. But it was an opportunity for those in the plastics industry to make money as well.

Because of the lockdown the COVID-19 response mechanism entailed, many experts emerged, postulating what the post-COVID society would be like. Some were seriously predicting radical changes in the way we lived, worked, and interacted.

To get around the pandemic, humanity developed some tools, tactics and methods, besides the face masks nd other personal protective equipment. Zoom, an online meeting app that had been created long before the pandemic, gained so much it became the generic name for virtual meeting apps. The work-from-home idea also came upon the word; delivery services and online shopping increased quite rapidly, while hospitality places such as clubs, lounges, and hotels suffered considerably.

It is important to discuss these businesses and industries as they are, six years after the pandemic.

1.      Personal Protective Equipment: Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was in high demand during the pandemic because of the contagious nature of the virus, the need for people to protect themselves from getting infected, as well as the need for caregivers and medical professionals to be protected while attending to infected patients. Businessmen and women made billions of naira importing or locally producing the various types of PPEs. Expectedly, prices skyrocketed in several folds, as demand chased desperately supply. Facemasks, seen only in a few places such as hospital wards, factory floors, and dust-prone warehouses, suddenly became items of general use. Those who stocked a few cartons brought in container-loads. Today, nobody sees as many facemasks on the streets as was the case during the pandemic. The last set of traders who imported facemasks before the end of the lockdown was lifted had the wares piled in their warehouses as demand had fled.

Demand for other types of PPEs also disappeared as well. Equipment such as crank beds for hospitals, filtering respirators, sterile gloves, medical coveralls, head and foot coverings and eye protective glasses, which had already become like every other commodity, lost their demand mojo too.

As soon as the isolation centres which littered the country became free of patients, the demand for this special purpose equipment shriveled.

The fortunes of those who made and sold PPEs didn’t last a day into the opening of the world, after COVID. Many actually predicted that enough people would become so health-conscious after the pandemic that they would continue to wear facemasks as they moved around, but the world is not seeing that in reality. People have shunned the social distancing prescribed by COVID and returned to relationships as usual.

2.      Virtual meeting apps: Event centres and hotels shut down during the pandemic. Many “experts” predicted doom for the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) industry. In their places, the online meeting apps would sit. The virtual meeting apps were also predicted to take the place of a significant aspect of office meetings, client visitations, and campaign pitches.

As it turned out, virtual meeting apps have become essential, but have not been able to take the place of all the work activities that it was touted to replace. Zoom gained its popularity and relevance. Google Meet grew, Microsoft Teams became more well-known, and Cisco Webex became essential for CNN live news interviews, but they didn’t wipe out the need for real live events and travel for meetings.

These solutions became much more useful for meetings where physical travel is materially impossible. Deals where the partners need an introduction and to get to know one another have been unable to be properly conducted virtually, even as many business meetings have been successfully conducted online.

Rather than become replacements, they have come to be accepted as just another office tool. The MICE industry is still thriving and growing. Destinations that branded themselves around MICE, such as New York, Texas, Cape Town, Kigali, and the Chinese Canton Fair in Guangzhou and Guangdong, have not looked back ever since. First, after successful fairs, exhibitions after exhibitions and conferences after conferences have been taking place in these places and in other places around the world

3.      Work from Home: The work-from-home sounded so future-forward that it even got its own acronym – WFH. People bragged about how more productive they are while working from their homes. They even created modules that they claimed made them more productive. It sounded very good, and employees made them beer-parlour talking points, often creating the impression that they are working for cool companies.

But that is where it ends. More than 98% of organistions have long abandoned the WFH system, like WTF with those who have been trying to sell a system that is so flawed? Great that there are some jobs these days that one can do at home, like those remote jobs that engage people and make them work for offshore companies; some are called Upwork, and other freelance opportunities, but they are not the same as being employed. The WFH advocates have been silenced. Employers who praised it have almost all gone silent

4.      Logistics, especially home and office deliveries. Logistics is the biggest winner of all the industries that got huge fillips from the pandemic. Starting with eCommerce, the logistics sector picked up and continues to expand as online shopping penetrated the country.

People demanded and desired more convenience in their shopping activities. The logistics advantage during Covid-19 was not essentially because people wanted to play the couch potato by ordering things online. Movement was restricted and many of the stores were not even open. This forced almost everyone to rely on delivery services to purchase anything or send anything anywhere.

Businesses exchanged files via dispatch riders and food and medicals were also so delivered.

Today, logistics appears to be even bigger than it was during the pandemic, servicing new industries and areas. In most of the big markets in Lagos nd the federal capital, Abuja, for instances are dispatch riders who station there every day to serve the needs of those who ordered products online or bulk purchases who might be unable to ferry their purchases home.

Today, there are logistics companies that have aggregated restaurants and take food from there to homes and workplaces for customers who order food. Chowdeck, Foodcourt, Midnight Deli are very popular players in this space. Since the ban on motorcycle transportation in most parts of cosmopolitan Lagos, the sight of any motorcycle in the city must either be the one belonging to any of the legion of delivery companies servicing the city.

5.      Clubs and social centres: Events did not die, it merely hibernated. Post COVID -19, there have been more hotels opened across Nigeria in five years than in 50 years.

Cubs and Lounges have also been sprouting nearly everywhere. There are two or three nightclubs in every neighbourhood in Nigeria today. If the culture of "hanging out” was thought to be diminished by COVID-19, it actually spiked it. The investments in nightclubs and night life by Nigerians have never been more upbeat, post Covid. Some credit the growth and acceptance of Nigerian music across the world for this, but I am not sure of this. The growth of the Nigerian music industry could not have made more people choose to leave the home at night for hedonistic wakes.

Clubs were few in the past, and people who clubbed regularly were often viewed as irresponsible. Once, there was a category of women labeled rather negatively as “club girls.” Once anybody is described this way, then the person’s degree of irresponsibility was beyond redemption.

Today, you rarely hear of that category of ladies anymore. This trend followed COVID. The nightclub lifestyle evolved, and it appears it has come to stay, thanks to the developments after the pandemic.