The novel Coronavirus outbreak is slowing in China but continues to grow elsewhere around the world. The Chinese government has taken the most severe epidemic prevention and control measures, such as city-wide lockdowns, class suspensions, flight suspensions, and business shutdowns. All walks of life across the country have been hit hard. The game and amusement industry, which should have been bustling and thriving, is in dire straits, suffering huge economic losses.
The direct impact of the epidemic on game and amusement equipment manufacturing enterprises is the suspension of production, falling demand, and capital waste. The shortage of manpower, soaring labor costs, and tight supply of raw materials are even more serious, which are restricting production. While the huge crisis is testing the viability of the enterprises, it also quietly opens a door. For example, for the manufacturers specializing in sterilization equipment it ushers in an era of high demand with unavailable goods (spray sterilizers), receiving a large number of unexpected cross-border orders. Not just a few powerful enterprises have adopted transformation strategies to produce sterilization equipment to tackle the challenges ahead.
The operators of entertainment venues are still in the stage of anxiety because they don’t know when they can reopen their venues. It is a nightmare for all of the venue operators because their venues have been closed since the end of January. In the face of the epidemic, operators are taking some self-help measures such as suspending their businesses, striving for a reduction and exemption of their rents, adopting internet marketing strategies, organizing online training for employees, and exploring the feasibility of “sharing employees”. Continuing their improvement and seizing the opportunities after the epidemic are the survival strategies for venue operators.
In addition to taking new measures, some small, medium and micro-sized enterprises have to transfer their possessions of or share their factories with others, and cut jobs and costs to preserve their strength. It is foreseeable that unmanned self-service equipment will usher in huge demand. The market competition of page view, online marketing of new media, cross-industry alliance and brand building will become more intense, while more opportunities will be brought by the market, because no industry can be immune from the epidemic. The trend of cross-border linkage and resource integration will become general consensuses in a wider range of industries and create more opportunities for business cooperation.
If winter comes, can spring be far behind? We ought to find opportunities through crisis and changes as well as getting our lives and businesses back to normal. The impact of the epidemic is only in the short term, we need to think, and seek changes to meet the exploding demand after the outbreak.
Asu Su
Editor-in-Chief
※The article is published in the GTI Magazine Issue No. 184 in March 2020 |
