We are a large format printing and signage company and a lot of our customers are expo companies and event management companies and these guys have literally had their orders for the foreseeable future turned off like a switch overnight.

I’ll have to say at the moment I am worried!  Since Wednesday last week I would have expected to have taken maybe 40 or 50 orders but we have in fact taken 10 small orders.

have now had to put all staff except for one that is now doing part time onto paid holiday which will then follow onto unpaid leave. We have gone from having five full time staff down to one part time. Our sales are down by roughly 80%.

Luckily the bank has stepped up and we have managed to get two loans for a ute and a printing machine deferred for six months but we are struggling to get a finance company to do the same thing for our final loan as they seem to want us to prove that we are out of every single resource before they will help.

Our biggest worry now though is that we have a large rented premises with a big lease, we are not making enough in sales at the moment to cover the rent so we are going to have to make a big decision very quickly whether to hand in our notice, hope that the landlord will be generous or that the government will step in. I really feel at the moment that the government are moving way too slowly on coming up with a package to help small businesses properly but I am also really worried that the Morrison government don’t want to go far enough.

We have been waiting for 4 or 5 days now since they mentioned rent relief, I hope that we can hang on long enough.

This post was written on our Flying Solo forums by an anonymous small business owner from Sydney.